Lodging/Transportation

As with many other destinations, my suggestion for lodging is to bypass the hotels and look for vacation rentals such as those found on HomeAway.com and VRBO.com. We’ve done that several times and have never been disappointed. You’ll likely get a bigger and better furnished space, plus other perks such as staying in a historic firehouse that now serves as an artist’s studio. In many cases, these types of lodging are cheaper than hotels, and in cases where they’re equal to or more than a hotel room, you’re still getting a lot more bang for your buck.

In Baltimore, we stayed in an apartment on Fleet Street, which is in the heart of Fell’s Point, a neighborhood that’s home to a number of restaurants, shops, and bars. The area was once home to a large Polish population, so there are a number of Polish establishments sprinkled around Fell’s Point. In D.C., we stayed in the aforementioned firehouse, which is located near Dupont Circle and is only a block away from a subway stop.

The top thing to keep in mind when looking for lodging in Baltimore and D.C. is where you are in relation to where you want to visit and how easy it is for you to get there without getting in your car. Parking is scarce, confusing, and expensive. For instance, it will cost you a flat fee of $20 to park at the National Aquarium in Baltimore! My suggestion would be to stay in or near where you want to visit and take advantage of the public transportation systems. In Baltimore, many of the tourist sights are in or near the harbor. That area and the surrounding neighborhoods are very walkable and have good public transportation. From our apartment in Fell’s Point, we were able to get to almost all of the destinations on our itinerary by either walking or taking a short ride on the free Charm City Circulator bus, which runs every 15 minutes. We only had one destination that was farther away — the Maryland Zoo — and we saved that for the day we were leaving Baltimore, so we didn’t have to get into our car until we were on our way out of town, which was a good thing because it took us a while to find street parking in Fell’s Point. In D.C., as long as you’re within easy walking distance of a subway station, you’re pretty much set for anywhere in the city.

Also, traffic on the Baltimore-Washington Turnpike SUCKS! What should’ve been a 35-40 minute trip around 4 p.m. ended up taking two-plus hours. Stay away from it if you can.

Dining

You can see a review of all the places we dined at during our trip on our food blog. Also, if you are into Polish food, be sure to check out Krakus Deli in Fell’s Point. It’s a terrific Polish general store that smokes its own meats and sausages and sells a wide variety of delicious Polish chocolates.

Attractions

There are plenty of things to do in both cities and there are plenty of guides that’ll be more comprehensive than what I can provide here. So I’ll just give a quick review of the places we visited.

Baltimore

• National Aquarium: Solid as far as aquariums go, though it didn’t really have anything that particularly wowed us. The crowds don’t help either, especially on weekends or holidays, when you are constantly dodging little kids running through the many narrow corridors. Buy tickets online a couple days in advance, especially if you want to get tickets to the dolphin shows. When we went to book online the night before our visit, all the morning entry time slots were sold out, along with all the dolphin shows.
• Edgar Allan Poe House: I can’t comment on the interior of the house since we didn’t get in because we got there before 11 a.m. and found out the place doesn’t open until noon. From the outside, though, this didn’t look very impressive, and it’s located in a rundown neighborhood with rows upon rows of houses with boarded-up windows.
• Maryland Zoo: This was my favorite attraction in Baltimore. The zoo is decent-sized in terms of area but relatively small in terms of number of exhibits. The exhibits, however, were pretty well done and when we went, we got to see many of the animals. The baby sifakas, born in February 2011, was definitely the highlight of our visit. The zoo is located in Druid Hill Park, which looked very pretty while we were driving past and through it on our way to the zoo, and I wish we had time to explore it on foot.

Washington, D.C.

• Newseum: This was a somewhat unexpected highlight of the trip and worth the $20 cost of admission. The museum is a beautiful glass building with very well done exhibits. You can easily spend five-plus hours looking at everything in the museum, which is why it’s a good thing that your ticket is good for two consecutive days. The top-level terrace offers a nice view of Pennsylvania Avenue leading up to Capitol Hill (and a nice view of the Canadian embassy as well).
• National Zoo: This is a terrific zoo, and it’s FREE! Be prepared to spend at least half a day here if you want to see everything. It’s usually crowded, so expect lines at some of the more popular exhibits, such as the giant pandas.
• International Spy Museum: This is definitely worth a visit. The museum has a lot of interesting exhibits related to the history and craft of spying. Among my favorites were the Mystery Science Theater 3000-style short films. Definitely make time to check those out.