Goodbye Baltimore, Hello…

Hello travel friends!

Saturday, 26 June 2021, was my official last day in Baltimore, and the first day of my epic road tripping adventure. I ordered my last Sam’s bagel for a while (if you’re in Fed Hill make sure to stop by), and then spent the day with a few friends helping me to do a last storage unit run before packing up the car and turning in my apartment keys.

I’ve spent the last two years in Baltimore, and while I really enjoyed my time there (pandemic aside), and I’ll enjoy going back to visit in the future, it’s not where I see myself putting down long term roots.

Before I start thinking about all of the new places I’ll be exploring soon, I want to take a look back at my final impressions of Baltimore.

the Good:

  1. Walkability:

    • Before I moved to Baltimore I had only lived in small towns. I grew up in a pretty rural area (no sidewalks to be seen anywhere) and then spent my college years and the first few years of my post-college working life in towns where I could walk to a few restaurants or local businesses… but if I needed anything else I had to hop in the car.

    • By contrast, with a combination of walking, biking, and even electric scooters, you can get almost anywhere in the extended downtown Baltimore area. From shopping to restaurants to farmers markets to groceries to hardware stores, you can get everywhere.

    • Final Verdict: I love this about Baltimore and will definitely be looking for more places like this in the future

  2. Vegan Food Scene

    • This might surprise people, but Baltimore has an amazing vegan food scene. When I got there in summer of 2019, there were bi-annual restaurant weeks already, but they were just starting a bi-annual VEGAN restaurant week as well! This celebrated some local vegan staples, but also challenged other places to offer some vegan friendly fare. While some places missed the mark, others really took it to heart and continued to offer a few “not just a salad or beyond burger” menu options well past the designated restaurant week timeline.

    • You can get everything from American staples like mac & cheese to Maryland “crab” cakes to southern soul food. Some of my favorites (both all vegan and ones that just have a few vegan options) are:

    • Final Verdict: I love food, I love variety, and I love having OPTIONS. So you better believe that wherever I end up in my travels, I’ll be pointing out some good veg-friendly choices along the way.

  3. Water Access

    • While you can’t go swimming in the inner harbor (without potentially starting to glow a little…), Baltimore does have some great water access. You have the harbor walk, sailing, Annapolis is only 45 mins away, not to mention the entire Maryland / Delaware peninsula from Eastern Shore towns to the Atlantic coast beaches & parks all within a 2 hour drive. You can even see some wild horses out in Assateague State Park near Ocean City.

    • Final Verdict: Being so close to the water every day definitely gives me a sense of calm that I don’t always find elsewhere. From a beach on the ocean to harbor / river / lake access, I have a feeling that my final destination will have some serious water features.


THE BAD:

  1. The Tap Water

    • Ok hear me out. I don’t care about drinking the water, that was fine. However, the water in Baltimore is extremely hard. You can’t wash anything without 500 large spots left on each glass, bowl, and spoon. If you’ve never had hard water, it means that there is a large concentration of mineral deposits in the system and when the water dries, the minerals are left.

    • For me, all of this leftover stuff in the water translated into a lovely series of eczema and other dermatitis outbreaks for the entire two years I was living in Baltimore. I went to a dermatologist, needed medicated shampoo, got a filter for my shower, dove into all skincare options… needless to say it was a lot and it still didn’t fix the problem completely. It’s something that if I were to buy a house and get a very intense water filtration system I could probably fix, but overall… I’ll be glad to be away from the water for a while to see if it helps.

    • Final Verdict: Future me is getting a very intense water filtration system for my house regardless… just in case.

  2. The “Block by Block” Reality

    • This is a hard one for me to grapple with. As someone who lived in a rural area growing up, I always yearned for city life. I moved closer and closer to the joy of having a sidewalk and being able to access the world by walking out my front door (and not having to drive 20+ minutes to get anywhere). When I moved to Baltimore I finally got that wish. I was able to really dig into all of the joys of city life: walking to work (and everywhere), enjoying parks, eating a diverse food selection, access to arts and cultural events, and getting to meet a wide variety of people. In general, city life is for me and I don’t see myself giving that up anytime soon.

    • The hard part is that Baltimore has a lot of problems that accompany the good. If you talk to someone who visited even 5 years ago, BMore has changed. There are more public areas, safety is on the rise, and neighborhoods are slowly being gentrified (we can have a discussion about the pro/con side of that another time… it’s loaded I know). But a lot of the bad still remains, and the biggest thing on that list is safety. One of the most common things you hear when folks describe the city is that it’s “block by block”. This means that you could be in a perfectly nice / relatively safe street…. and then you walk literally one block over and you went one block too far. This variability happens in most cities, but I’ve found that in Baltimore it’s just a bit more jarring with how often and unpredictably this swap happens. As a young-ish single woman (with a very tiny dog), that translated to a few too many times where I questioned if my next adventure would be ok for me to do alone… and a few too many times where the answer was “I’d better skip it”. Maybe I was being too cautious, but I’ve also walked down that street I shouldn’t have, and knew it was the wrong choice.

    • Final Verdict: Baltimore is an interesting place to live, and a cool place to visit, but when I get to the point of wanting to settle down, buy some kind of house or condo, and raise some offspring… this isn’t the urban area I want to do it in. While safety concerns and unfortunately rated school districts play a part, I’m also a big believer in feeling the “vibe” of a place. Sadly for me, Baltimore just doesn’t feel like home.

My trip over the next year will provide me an opportunity to really see new cities and see if any of them give me a better sense of home than Baltimore did. I’m excited to get out there, push some boundaries, get out of my comfort zone, and really see what each new place has to offer.

Coming up I’ll be sharing a variety of different aspects of my trip including photo diaries, food & culture finds, dog-friendly activities, and details about nomad-life logistics. Stay tuned for all that and more as I explore life on the road.

~ Happy Travels, V ~