A Sports-Centric Long Weekend in Baltimore

As I get this blog up and running, I'm posting summaries of our past trips, starting in 2011. This post is about our trip to Baltimore in July 2012.

My husband is a huge fan of the Tottenham Hotspurs, a soccer (futbol) team in the English Premiere League. He regularly gets up at 6:00 a.m. on weekends to watch their games live. When he saw the announcement that they were going to play an exhibition game in Baltimore, there was no question that he wanted to be there. Since I'm an awesome wife, I suggested we go together. Thanks to a great rewards credit card and some online deals, it was actually quite affordable.

Day 1 - Wednesday, July 25, 2012

We both had the day off of work, but our flight didn't leave until the afternoon, so we had a "vacation breakfast" at Blue's Egg. There's something kind of fun about going to your favorite weekend breakfast spot on a Wednesday. After breakfast, we grabbed our things and headed to the airport. Our airline tickets were free with credit card reward points. We had a substantial layover in Cleveland, so we were able to stop at Great Lakes Brewing and try a few brews.

We arrived in Baltimore pretty late, and got a quick taxi ride to our hotel, the Fairfield Inn & Suites. We were informed by the front desk clerk that 70% of the hotel was booked with attendees of an anime convention. We were in for some pretty sweet people watching. Regardless of the apparent high demand, we had booked our room on Priceline four months earlier for $75/night plus tax. The hotel was akin to a Courtyard Marriott (it is a Marriott, actually) and offered a continental breakfast of fruit, yogurt, bread/bagels, and hard boiled eggs. Excellent value!

We went right to bed, because we had a fairly early baseball game to go to in the morning.

Day 2 - Thursday, July 26, 2012

We took our time getting ready and hit up Miss Shirley's Cafe for breakfast. I had the fried green tomatoes and grits and was very happy with it. Aaron had the chicken and waffles with some hot pepper jelly. We felt like southerners for a hot minute. After breakfast we wandered around the Inner Harbor for a bit (didn't take long) before we started making our way to Camden Yards. There were already some hardcore nerds waiting outside the convention center for the anime convention to start.

We walked around the promenade (?) at Camden Yards and I said hello to the Oriole Bird. This was my second time at Camden Yards, and Aaron's first.

We checked out all the points of interest, and of course Aaron tried a local beer. We were avoiding our seats until the last possible minute, because it was 102 degrees outside. I believe the heat index was about 120. The staff were prepared though, and they handed out ... free ice!

Right before game time, we made it to our seats. These were another great perk of our rewards card (MLB Extra Bases, at the time of this trip). 100% free with rewards points. Nice view, too.

After about two innings, we lost any semblance of shade and were stuck in the unrelenting hot sun.

We stayed through the fourth inning, and then called it a day. It's easier to walk away from sweet seats when they're free. And when you can barely breathe.

After leaving the game we walked back by the anime crowd—the line was wrapped all around the convention center at this point—and stopped for a bite to eat at La Tasca. Their DC location was a favorite of mine when I lived there, and we wanted a hit of Spain, since we were planning our trip to Spain at this point.

After tapas, we sought refuge in our air conditioned hotel room, not emerging again until it was time to find dinner. We wandered around an Italian-influenced neighborhood, and eventually ended up at Isabella's Brick Oven Pizza & Panini, thanks to Yelp. We had a pizza, and then sought out in search of something sweet. I'm so glad we found Vaccaro's Italian Pastry Shop. It smelled like heaven. We were happy to stand in line for one of their tasty treats.

Day 3 - Friday, July 27, 2012

When we woke up, I checked my phone and saw an amazing deal in my Kayak flight alert. So, before getting up for the day, we booked our flight to Spain for our holiday trip.

We didn't have any sports-related plans today, so we decided to do a little sight-seeing. We grabbed a free ride from the Charm City Circulator to Fort McHenry. The defense of this fort was the inspiration for the Star Spangled Banner. We entered and watched a short film (very well done) about the history of the fort, and the song. Then we were free to explore the fort, including some barracks.

This was a fun way to spend an hour or so. We then hopped on the bus again to grab an early lunch at L.P. Steamers. I was determined to eat crab in Baltimore. I didn't realize it would include a lesson on how to disassemble them.

After lunch (Aaron wussed out and had a crab cake, no disassembly required), we strategized ways to spend the day in a comfortable environment, rather than the blazing sun. We settled on the National Aquarium. On our way there, we passed an anime convention attendee that was dressed as Nyan Cat.

Aaron told me we should try to look like we were under water here. It sort of just looks like someone farted.

The aquarium was pretty cool. We got to pet sting rays, and the multi-level exhibit was really neat. The dolphin show was entertaining as well. It was crowded, but I suppose that's to be expected on a Friday when it's 100 degrees out. I asked Aaron what he remembered and he says, "The octopus. You weren't supposed to take a picture of it. But people did anyway because they're mean."

After the aquarium, we had a fairly early dinner at Heavy Seas Alehouse, then went back to Vaccaro's again so we could get dessert to go back to our hotel while we watched the Olympic opening ceremonies (on tape delay).

Saturday, Day 4 - July 28, 2012

It was finally here! The entire reason we came to Baltimore... to see Spurs vs Liverpool at M&T Bank Stadium. And once again, it was HOT. We walked to the stadium from our hotel (a little over a mile), and then hung around outside waiting for the doors to open. When it finally did, I invested in some Spurs gear ... mainly because it was Under Armour and I thought I'd be a lot cooler in it than the shirt I was wearing.

Because Aaron was hanging out with his wife, he didn't go to the supporters bar to hang out with the crazy soccer fans. But, we did see them come into the stadium, and he joined in the chanting.