Vaughan to Baltimore: the Inner Harbor weekend by chauffeured car

Baltimore, the harbour an hour from Washington

Baltimore is the city Vaughan families reach fifty minutes north of Washington and find fuller than they expected: the Inner Harbor's rebuilt waterfront with the National Aquarium — the dolphins, the Atlantic coral reef's ring tank, the Australian gorge, the rainforest under the glass pyramid — and the historic ships at the piers, the USS Constellation's sloop of 1854, the submarine Torsk and the lightship Chesapeake; Fort McHenry across the harbour, the star fort whose flag Francis Scott Key watched survive the British bombardment of 1814 and wrote the anthem about; Camden Yards, the 1992 ballpark with the B&O Warehouse behind right field that every retro ballpark since has copied, and M&T Bank Stadium beside it for the Ravens; Fell's Point's cobbled waterfront of eighteenth-century houses and pubs; Little Italy's tablecloth restaurants; the Walters Art Museum's free galleries and the American Visionary Art Museum's outsider art at Federal Hill's foot; and the crab houses, where a family learns the mallet and the Old Bay. The Visit Baltimore site has the city; the Washington post has the capital, and the border guide has the bridge.

The road

From Maple the QEW, the Peace Bridge, I-190 and I-90 to Rochester, I-390 south, I-86 to Corning, I-99 and I-81 down Pennsylvania's spine to Harrisburg, and I-83 south for ninety minutes through York to Baltimore's downtown — ten hours by the estimate and ten and a half with the booth and stops, split at Gettysburg or Harrisburg for a family doing Baltimore first, or the fifty minutes up the Baltimore–Washington Parkway from the capital. The Sprinter carries a family on the East Coast loop; the SUV a family of four for the harbour weekend.

The National Aquarium and the Inner Harbor

The aquarium's timed tickets — which sell out on summer Saturdays and are booked on the aquarium's site — put a family into Pier 3's building for three hours: the Blacktip Reef's sharks under the glass, the Atlantic coral reef's four-storey ring tank walked down in a spiral, the Australia exhibit's river gorge and its crocodile, the rainforest at the top under the glass roof with the sloths and the birds, the jellyfish gallery, and Pier 4's dolphin amphitheatre where the dolphins are watched rather than performing since the shows ended; the Inner Harbor around it has the historic ships' tickets at the visitor centre, the Maryland Science Center's dinosaurs and planetarium at the harbour's west end, the paddle boats shaped like dragons and Chessie the sea monster, the Top of the World observation deck on the World Trade Center's twenty-seventh floor, and the water taxi that a family rides to Fell's Point and Fort McHenry.

Fort McHenry and the anthem

Fort McHenry National Monument at the harbour's mouth is the star-shaped fort of 1798 whose garrison held through the twenty-five-hour British bombardment of September 13–14, 1814 — the fifteen-star flag raised at dawn is the one Key saw from a truce ship and wrote The Star-Spangled Banner about, and the original flag is at the Smithsonian's American History museum in Washington; the fort's visitor centre film ends with the screen rising on the flag over the ramparts, the ranger programmes fire the cannon and change the flag with the visitors' help, and the ramparts' walk has the harbour and the Key Bridge's replacement under construction across it. A Grade 7 student's hour; the park's site has the programmes, and the water taxi or the SUV reaches it in ten minutes from the Inner Harbor.

Camden Yards, the Ravens and the games

Oriole Park at Camden Yards, two blocks from the harbour, opened in 1992 as the ballpark that brought the brick, the asymmetry and the downtown back to baseball — the B&O Warehouse's brick wall behind right field, Eutaw Street's open concourse with Boog's Barbecue's pit beef, the statues of the Orioles' Hall of Famers, Babe Ruth's birthplace museum two blocks west — and a Vaughan family's summer evening with the Blue Jays' AL East visits the dates to pick; M&T Bank Stadium beside it is the Ravens' Sundays from September, with the Ravens–Steelers rivalry the ticket that sells in the spring. The teams' sites have the tickets and the Sprinter is in the stadium's lots.

Fell's Point, Little Italy and the crabs

Fell's Point is the eighteenth-century shipbuilders' waterfront a mile east of the Inner Harbor — Thames Street's cobbles, the Broadway Market, the pubs that claim to be the oldest, the Frederick Douglass–Isaac Myers Maritime Park's shipyard museum, the Sagamore Pendry hotel in the old rec pier, the water taxi's dock — and the family's evening walk with dinner; Little Italy between the two is the tablecloth restaurants Vaughan's Italian families judge — Sabatino's, Chiapparelli's, Vaccaro's pastries — and the Feast of St. Anthony in June; the crab houses are the Baltimore meal — a dozen steamed blue crabs on brown paper with the mallet, the knife and the Old Bay, at L.P. Steamers in Locust Point or Nick's Fish House on the Middle Branch — and the children learn to pick a crab in an hour. The Lexington Market of 1782 downtown has Faidley's crab cake at the counter.

The museums and Federal Hill

The Walters Art Museum on Mount Vernon Place is free and one of the country's finest small collections — the medieval and Renaissance galleries, the Egyptian mummies, the Fabergé, the manuscripts — beside the Washington Monument of 1829, the first to the president, whose 227 steps climb to the view; the American Visionary Art Museum at Federal Hill's foot is the outsider artists' museum in a mosaic-covered building with the Kinetic Sculpture Race in May; the Baltimore Museum of Art in Charles Village has the largest Matisse collection in the world, free; and the B&O Railroad Museum in the 1884 roundhouse is the country's best collection of nineteenth-century locomotives and the train-loving child's morning. Federal Hill's park above the Inner Harbor's south shore is the photograph of the skyline across the water at dusk.

The weekend, in shape

Friday from Washington's hotel at 9, the Parkway, the Inner Harbor's hotel — the Marriott Waterfront or the Sagamore Pendry at Fell's Point — by 10:15, the National Aquarium's 11 a.m. timed entry until 2, the historic ships' Constellation at 2:30, the paddle boats, Little Italy's dinner; Saturday Fort McHenry's flag change at 9:30, the water taxi to Fell's Point for lunch, the B&O Railroad Museum or the Walters at 2, Federal Hill at dusk, the Orioles at 7:05 from Eutaw Street; Sunday Lexington Market's Faidley's at 10, the American Visionary Art Museum at 11, a crab house lunch at L.P. Steamers at 1, and the road — I-83, I-81 and the Pennsylvania spine, or the Parkway back to Washington. Two nights, the Sprinter on daily hire inside the East Coast loop, or a return from Vaughan with a Saturday on daily hire, one number in the booking engine.

What the chauffeur replaces

Ten hours from Vaughan through three states as a driver, or the Parkway's fifty minutes from Washington; the Peace Bridge; I-81's trucks and I-83's last ninety minutes; the Inner Harbor's garages on an Orioles night; Fort McHenry's lot; and the Sunday drive home. Baltimore is a short flight from Pearson and a couple flies; a family of five on the East Coast loop, or a family of four for the harbour weekend, drives in the Sprinter or the SUV for one fare with Gettysburg on the road.

Seasons

April to September for the Orioles and the harbour's paddle boats; September's Defenders Day at Fort McHenry for the anthem's anniversary and the fireworks; autumn for the Ravens; the American Visionary Art Museum's Kinetic Sculpture Race in May; December for the harbour's lights and the Miracle on 34th Street's decorated block in Hampden; summer is hot and the aquarium and the Walters are the refuge. The crabs are in season from April to November and best in the late summer.

Pairing it

Baltimore pairs with Washington fifty minutes south as the loop's harbour day, with Gettysburg and Hershey ninety minutes north on the road down, with Philadelphia ninety minutes northeast by I-95 for the East Coast loop's next stop, and with Atlantic City two and a half hours east for the group that ends at the shore.

The harbour day from Washington, in order

A family of five from Woodbridge on the Washington week's fourth day: the Sprinter from the Washington hotel at 8:15, the Baltimore–Washington Parkway, the Inner Harbor's garage at 9:15, the National Aquarium's 9:30 timed entry — the ring tank, the sharks, the rainforest, the dolphins — until 12:30; the paddle boats' half hour and the Constellation's deck at 1; the water taxi to Fort McHenry at 2 for the flag change with the rangers at 2:30 and the ramparts; the taxi back to Fell's Point at 4 for Thames Street's walk and an early crab dinner at a Fell's Point house; the Sprinter at 7 and Washington's hotel by 8:15. Twelve hours of a daily-hire day that adds a second city to the capital's week, and the aquarium's site has the timed tickets.

The B&O Railroad Museum, for the train family

The B&O's 1884 Mount Clare roundhouse a mile west of the harbour holds the country's finest collection of nineteenth-century locomotives — the Tom Thumb's replica, the Civil War engines, the first mile of commercial railway track in the country under the museum's own trains, which run on weekends — and a Vaughan family with a six-year-old who loves trains does it as the Sunday morning before the crab house; the museum's site has the train rides' schedule, and the Sprinter is in the museum's lot.

Costs, plainly

Baltimore as a Washington day is one daily-hire day in the booking engine; as its own weekend it is a return with a Saturday on daily hire. The aquarium's tickets, the hotel, the game and the crabs are the family's own, the Walters and the BMA are free, and the 48-hour exemption covers Fell's Point's shops. Against the fare are ten hours from Vaughan as a driver or the Parkway's fifty minutes, the Inner Harbor's garages on an Orioles night and Fort McHenry's lot; a couple flies, and a family of five on the East Coast loop or a family of four for the harbour weekend book the Sprinter or the SUV for one fare.

Booking it

Book Baltimore as a day or a night inside a Washington daily hire, or a return from your Vaughan address with a Saturday on daily hire; tell us the aquarium's timed entry, the game, the hotel, the seats and every passenger's citizenship for the bridge, and the chauffeur confirms the plan the evening before.

Book the Baltimore weekend