Travelly Summer

Last week I flew to Baltimore for an algebra institute for elementary and middle school teachers. I wasn't presenting, just attending with a colleague to hopefully learn something we could take back to our preservice elementary teachers. Maybe it's unprofessional to admit this, but I was more excited about the opportunity to add a new(ish) city to my travel list than to attend the conference itself.

I lived in the D.C. area the year after college graduation #1. Although I became familiar with the Baltimore airport, which is considered a D.C. area airport, I've only actually driven into Baltimore proper once, and I wasn't at the wheel, and I never got out of the car. At the time, it struck me as a sad sort of city, with a lot of history and a lot of potential and a big gaping hole in between the two, much like Detroit. My only other impressions of Baltimore have come primarily from Hairspray, which opens with the main character joyfully singing about the rats in the street and the flasher living next door, and from an episode of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me filmed in Baltimore where jokes about the city's degenerate weirdness were met by wild cheers from the audience, and from The Wire, which I haven't actually seen, but I have it on good authority that it's comprised of five gritty, violent seasons of Baltimore crime and corruption.

So I wasn't really expecting to love Baltimore. I was just kind of interested in seeing it.

But the moment the airport shuttle entered the city I was slammed with an unexpected wave of nostalgia for the Midatlantic states, and a desire to explore. Most of my four days were spent in the hotel at the conference, but I got to escape every once in awhile, sometimes with the colleague I came with, and sometimes on my own. The hotel was located right by Oriole Stadium at Camden Yards, and the fourth floor exercise room and an adjoining patio both looked right into the stadium and onto the field. There were baseball games all four nights, and even though I am not really a baseball fan, I loved being adjacent to the lights and the sounds and the summer energy. We were also just a few blocks from the waterfront, which has been nicely developed - a wide red brick path and shops and restaurants, a little outdoor amphitheater with live music, sand volleyball courts, paddle boats, museums.

If I walked the other direction, up Eutaw Street (I kind of got a kick out of that name), I found myself in a very different Baltimore, one inhabited mostly by residents and college students instead of suburbanites and tourists. This part of town (and I still only saw a very small part of it) spanned a much wider history - decades and centuries instead of years. Near my hotel was the Bromo-Seltzer Tower, which now houses a little shop for local artists. I stopped in on a whim and was rewarded with an awesome little personalized history lesson from a very friendly sales clerk. Up the street from the tower were several buildings with impressive facades, and the Hippodrome Theater. There was Westminster Hall, a nineteenth century church built over and around a cemetery housing the graves of famous Baltimore residents of the 18th and 19th centuries, including Edgar Allan Poe. There was the Lexington Market, with ethnic food stands and produce and bakeries, and probably a lot more because I didn't realize how big the market was until I got back to the hotel and googled it.

I didn't explore much beyond the market because I don't know Baltimore well enough to know where it's safe to walk and where to be cautious. I thought it best to let caution rule because, I still trusted some of what Hairspray and Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me and The Wire have taught me about Baltimore.

The solution to yesterday's puzzle.

Honestly, I really loved the city. I felt sorry that I didn't have more time there. I had planned a short jaunt down into Washington, D.C. and my old neighborhood at the end of the trip, but I contemplated sticking around Baltimore a little longer. Nostalgia won out, and I was glad I was able to head south to explore places that I considered home eight years ago, to have dinner with some friends, to go for a morning run along the National Mall. I won't post pictures because a) it wasn't really the new and exciting and unfamiliar part of my trip, and b) I didn't actually take any.

Other than the conference itself, which to be honest wasn't spectacular,* I absolutely loved every single minute of my sort-of-working vacation. Seattle/Portland and Baltimore/D.C. were great bookends to my summer, and now I think I feel ready to dive back into real life.

* Sorry NCTM. To your credit, you did a spectacular job with the affiliate leadership conference in Denver two weeks before.