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July 29-30, 2014  Days 93-94  Chesapeake Bay

City Docks, Inner Harbor
Baltimore, MD



Entering the Inner Harbor 

Engineer Bill!

Viewing Carried Away
from our ride on the water taxi

We cruised up the Patapsco River, under the Francis Scott Key Bridge and into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor on Tuesday morning. We were happy to find space on the city dock finger piers.  These cannot be reserved ahead of time, but with power and water hookups and close proximity to many venues, we preferred this over one of many marinas.  We finally connected with staff from the dockmaster’s office and got checked in.

We had lunch on board and then set out to walk along the harbor.  The inner harbor is home to many restaurants, shops, museums, an aquarium, performance pavilions, marinas, historical ships including the Constellation, water taxis, paddle boats, tour boats, and more, while providing a great deal of wide walkways and park areas.  It is a very inviting area for people of all ages. We browsed through the two story Barnes and Noble, housed in the former Power Plant facility.



Ft. McHenry

Then we hopped on the Circulator, which is a free bus that we took to the Baltimore and Ohio RR Museum.  We spent two hours here and would like to have had more time seeing these massive locomotives.  We returned to the boat, had dinner, and then took a long walk along the harbor.  We decided to spend one more night here!

On Wednesday, we took the water taxi to Fells Point and connected with another water taxi that took us out to Ft. McHenry.  We had a wonderful time touring the fort and museum.  What a history lesson! We stood on top of the ridge and could see the cannons aimed at where the British ships were firing at them on September 13, 1814. When the firing stopped the next morning, Francis Scott Key wrote the words to the Star Spangled Banner. 

Baltimore is gearing up for a Star Spangled Celebration of the 200^th anniversary of our national anthem and will have tall ships, navy ships, Blue Angels, fireworks, and more for four days in mid September. We hope to return to see some of the festivities, although we do not have hopes of being able to dock here! 



The Harbor at night

After our tour of the fort, we took the water taxi back to Fells Point and had a very late lunch at Kooper’s Tavern.  We eventually returned to our boat and relaxed.  We had a light dinner later in the evening, and talked with friends and family on the phone.

We will depart Thursday morning and go back across the bay and anchor on the either the Wye or Miles River.