• Baltimore
• Eastern shore
• Southern Maryland
• Western Maryland
Baltimore
I would never want to live anywhere but Baltimore. You can look far and
wide, but you'll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style.
It's as if every eccentric in the South decided to move north, ran out
of gas in Baltimore, and decided to stay .
John Waters, Shock Value
BALTIMORE is among the more enjoyable stops on the east coast, and its
closely knit neighborhoods and historic quarters provide an engaging
backdrop to many diverse attractions, especially those along its
celebrated waterfront , like the Inner Harbor's National Aquarium and
the Pier 6 Concert Pavilion and Power Plant entertainment complex. The
city also boasts top-rated museums , like the Walters Art Museum and the
child-oriented, interactive Port Discovery, which cover everything from
fine arts through black history to urban archeology. That Baltimore has
been home to such diverse figures as writers Edgar Allan Poe and Anne
Tyler and civil rights activists Frederick Douglass and Thurgood
Marshall goes some way towards explaining its sometimes bizarrely varied
character.
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Vacation Rentals in Baltimore |
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Eastern shore
Maryland's compelling eastern shore occupies over half of the broad
Delmarva ( Del aware, Mar yland, V irgini a ) peninsula that protects
the Chesapeake from the open Atlantic. Its miles of back roads are
perfectly suited to aimless exploration and sudden discovery of such
sights as the odd wooden farmhouse or tobacco barn marooned in the
middle of a field, or an old sailboat tied up at an apparently decrepit
dock that springs to life when the fishing craft return. The US-50
bridge/tunnel, built across the Chesapeake Bay in the early 1960s, may
have made the eastern shore more accessible, but it hasn't affected its
air of somnolence. Branching off from US-50 as it races down to the
beach resort of Ocean City , quiet country lanes lead to two-hundred-year-old
waterfront towns like Chestertown, St Michaels and Oxford .
Southern Maryland
While Baltimore has grown into the state's largest and busiest city,
Annapolis , Maryland's colonial and current capital, has changed little
in size and outward appearance. Before the US broke free from English
rule, this was considered to be one of the most genteel and attractive
colonial centers, and though its time-worn streets are now usually
crowded, Annapolis is still among the more engaging small US cities. Its
once-vital Chesapeake Bay waterfront now has little of the feel of
colonial maritime life, but the real attractions of Annapolis, among its
narrow streets, include fine homes, the Beaux Arts campus of the US
Naval Academy, and the beautiful state capitol. If you like the look of
Annapolis, and want to get a better feel for the Chesapeake Bay region
away from the crowds, head south to places like St Mary's City - the
first capital of Maryland, completely reconstructed in the 1960s - or
Solomons Island , one of many small Chesapeake Bay towns that seem not
to have changed for decades.
Western Maryland
Stretched between West Virginia and the razor-straight Pennsylvania
border, western Maryland ranges for some two hundred miles east to west,
but is in places well under five miles across. In general, the further
west you go, the more mountainous and backwoodsy the feel, quite similar
to Maryland's Appalachian neighbors.
Though the countryside is very pretty and great for hiking and camping,
specific points of interest are few. Apart from the Civil War
battlefield at Antietam , west of the only sizeable town, Frederick ,
the best reason to come to this part of the state is to cycle or hike
the footpath of the restored old Chesapeake and Ohio Canal , which winds
along the Maryland side of the Potomac River from Washington DC for over
180 miles to Cumberland in the western mountains. Even further west is
the state's largest freshwater lake, Deep Creek Lake , popular with
watersports enthusiasts, which has more than 70,000 acres of public
parks and forests surrounding it - some of which makes smooth
cross-country skiing during the winter.
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from $62.00
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