Baltimore

We returned to Baltimore from our New York road trip on September 24^th to find Lazy W just as we had left her - tied securely to ‘B’ dock amid several hundred other boats at Anchorage Marina.

The marina is perfectly located within walking distance of Safeway, West Marine, Ace Hardware, and dozens of restaurants and pubs – a true boater’s heaven.  And every hour on the hour the bells of nearby St. Casimir Church ring out.

Across the harbor, Silo Point, once the biggest and fastest grain elevator in the world, has been converted into luxury urban residences. The Domino Sugars plant sits beside the global headquarters of Under Armour before the industrial skyline gives way to the office towers of the Inner Harbor.

There is so much to do in Baltimore and so little time.  While the Captain was content to spend his days lovingly caring for Lazy W, the Admiral had other plans!

Her hull is looking good, Captain!

The Orioles hosted the Red Sox at Camden Yards on September 28^th – the penultimate game of the baseball season.  The game meant little to either team as the Red Sox had already clinched the AL East title and the Orioles were no longer in contention for a wild card position.  Still stinging from an embarrassing loss the night before, the Orioles managed to squeak by the Red Sox - much to Greg’s consternation!

Frank and Greg at Camden Yards

During Peg and Greg’s weekend visit we wandered through Fells Point and the Inner Harbor.  That Sunday afternoon was a picture-perfect day in Baltimore!

The Inner Harbor from the Federal Hill side

with the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse and the Pier Six Pavilion

Frank was captivated by this beer cart near McCormick & Schmick’s Restaurant,

named Number 1 Best Happy Hour Deal in America by USA Today.

Of course, we stopped in to check it out!

                                    

“One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don’t know.”

“Africa is God’s country – and He can have it.”

“Ever since I met you, I’ve swept you off my feet.”

“There’s one thing I’ve always wanted to do before I quit: Retire.”

“I didn’t like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions –

the curtain was up.”

“I would never belong to a club that would have me as a member.”

In 1928, Animal Crackers opened on Broadway.  It was the third of three successful Broadway shows starring the Marx Brothers – Chico, Harpo, Groucho and Zeppo. The Marx Brothers had honed their comedic skills while on the road touring the vaudeville circuit.  The typical vaudeville show included numerous variety routines – dancing girls, comic sketches, juggling and plate spinning, musical numbers, ethnic caricatures, magic acts.  Animal Crackers embodies all of the flavor of a vaudeville show within a loosely-plotted society party ‘who-done-it’ at the fictitious Rittenhouse Manor.   We had front row seats at Baltimore’s Center Stage for the zany 2013 adaptation of Animal Crackers.  The audience had a rollicking good time!

It is amazing how much history you can learn just from exploring the monuments erected in our cities.  From afar, I thought that this beautiful sculpture located in Baltimore’s Harbor East section was a tribute to firefighters. Closer inspection revealed that it was the Katyn Memorial commemorating the victims of the Katyn Forest Massacre.  

“Fire has been used artistically to symbolize a rebirth or transformation.

In this monument a symbolic fire envelops the Katyn martyrs in its flames

and raises them spiritually into the pantheon of national heroes of Poland.”

In September 1939 Poland was invaded from the west by Nazi Germany and from the east by the Soviet Union.  The Soviets seized 20,000 Polish military officers, most of them reservists (doctors, teachers, lawyers, civil servants, religious leaders), and sent them to prison camps in the Soviet Union; most were massacred in Katyn Forest in an attempt by Stalin to eliminate opposition to communist rule in Poland.  (In 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union – Stalin and Poland now had a common enemy.)  For fifty years the Soviets denied responsibility for the Katyn Massacre, blaming the Nazis.  In 1992, the Russian president released secret documents to Poland that included the death sentences signed by Stalin at the time of the massacre.

In the early 1970’s a Baltimore man and former U.S. Army Major, Clement Knefel, sought to honor the memory of the Katyn victims and all other mistreated prisoners-of-war.  He started raising funds and sought the help of veterans’ organizations and the Maryland Division of the Polish American Congress.  A well-known Polish-American sculptor, Andrzej Pitynski, was commissioned to design the memorial.  It was created in Gliwice, Poland and formally dedicated here at Katyn Circle in November 2000.  And that is today’s history lesson...

The Fell’s Point Fun Festival has been staged since 1967 when it began as a small neighborhood fundraiser to stop the construction of I-95 through the historic waterfront area of Federal Hill and Fell’s Point.  Both maritime communities are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.    Thousands attend the weekend festival every year to enjoy the live music, entertainment, food and shopping surrounded by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century storefronts along the streets paved with Belgian block.  

The rooftop of Max’s was already decorated for Halloween!

With no shortage of bars and restaurants to explore where to enjoy happy hour became a tough decision.  The James Joyce Irish Pub and Restaurant in Harbor East (and all its furnishings) was designed and built in Ireland then shipped to Baltimore and assembled on site.  Friendly waiter, Guinness on tap, tasty Shepherd’s Pie.  Plug Ugly’s Publick Ale House in Canton – with a name like that we just had to stop in!  And again we got a history lesson.  The Plug Uglies were a street gang that roamed Baltimore in the 1850’s and are suspected of kidnapping Edgar Allan Poe.  Rowdy Ravens fans ruled the bar the day we visited.  So off to our next stop – Bo Brooks on the Canton waterfront.  (Here we met a student from Kings Point Merchant Marine Academy, closed until further notice due to the government shutdown.)  Tiki Bar Tailgate Party specials and plenty of TV’s for watching the Ravens beat the Dolphins.  Tavern on the Square.  Ale Mary’s.  The Horse You Came In On. Decisions, decisions...

  

And then the rain came!  The low spinning off the mid-Atlantic coast stalled for days and kept funneling steady rain and gloomy weather over Baltimore.  In 48 hours, the Inner Harbor recorded over 4.5 inches of rain!!  In wet weather like this, it feels as if Lazy W shrinks!  We had to get off no matter what the skies threw at us.

We took advantage of a short break in the rain to walk to the Inner Harbor and enjoy a few hours at the National Aquarium.  The new Black Tip Reef exhibit was awesome.  Floor-to-ceiling viewing windows put you face-to-face with the colorful, exotic sea creatures inhabiting this man-made 260,000 gallon coral reef eco-system.

Black tip sharks, a nurse shark and a ray

One of the largest residents of the exhibit is a 500-pound green sea turtle named Calypso.  Found stranded on a beach on Long Island, Calypso weighed just six pounds and had an infected front flipper which was later amputated.  She has been at the aquarium for eleven years and was the first animal to call the Black Tip Reef home when it was completed in July.  Over 1,200 other animals from 75 different species have been added.

Calypso

One of the more heavily attended exhibits was Jellies Invasion: Oceans Out of Balance.  We spent many an hour at anchor surrounded by sea nettles and particularly liked seeing the more exotic jellies on display here.  So did the dozens of young kids who wandered the exhibit with their parents on this rainy evening.

A tankful of moon jellies

The night was topped off with a visit to Chazz: A Bronx Original in Harbor East owned by the Oscar-nominated, Bronx-born actor Chazz Palminteri.  He was up for Best Supporting Actor in Woody Allen’s 1994 movie Bullets Over Broadway.  But his big break came in 1993 when he co-starred with Robert DeNiro in A Bronx Tale, a movie adaptation of his semi-autobiographical one-man show of the same name.  Ate at his restaurant, now I need to watch some of his movies!

Since Chazz: A Bronx Original is famous for its authentic Bronx-style coal oven pizza – it cooks in just 90-seconds in a 900°+ oven – our choice for dinner was an easy one!  Topped with the signature veal meatballs, it was quite good and compared  very favorably to our recent pizza excursion in the Bronx.  We overheard many of the other patrons ordering the homemade pasta dishes to fill up on carbs in preparation for their running in Saturday’s Baltimore Marathon.