Blog of Oonah V Joslin -- please visit my Parallel Oonahverse at WordPress

where I post stories and poems that have not been seen elsewhere - also recipes and various other stuff. http://oovj.wordpress.com/

and see me At the Cumberland Arms 2011









Friday 23 September 2011

Baltimore Nostalgia

For the next three weeks I am going to take you on a little nostalgia trip to Baltimore MD and if you've never been there, I strongly suggest you visit. Forget NY, forget DC, forget San Francisco and Miami - Baltimore is the place to be :)

This time last year we were in Baltimore. We arrived there on Setpember 22nd straight from 16 to 33 degrees - it was HOT. Luckily we'd booked into a really good hotel and could turn the air-con down to the comfortable 62 degrees we wanted and put the fan on to augment the effect.
Hilton Homewood Suites S. President St. Baltimore. You are COOL.

On September 23rd I had the privilege of meeting one of the poets whose work I have published and she is such a lovely person. She took us to Tea Volve where they sell all manner of teas and tasty food.
Jody Costa - lots of love x

Of course we did other things that day too like taking the Water Taxi to Fells Point and having a cheese steak in a local hostelry - not the last cheese steak nor the last hostelry! In fact we've barely scratched the surface of Fells Point and will have to go back and do it properly.                                     
DOMINO EFFECT
by Oonah
Platform boats.
The Inner Harbour
peppered with eateries
salted with people
seasoned as its age-old modern self.
It smells like diesel doughnuts
Old Bay and history.

On the 24th we headed over to Lexington Market but it was so hot a day we didn't linger long. We got the Charm City Circulator free bus outside the Dental Museum and headed back to explore nearer the hotel. We discovered TALARA! HUGE MISTAKE! MAJOR TEMPTATION! But in the evening there came the moment I was looking forward to - the reason for my trip to Baltimore - NATHAN ROSEN of MicroHorror. And just as the hour struck - there was a fire alarm and all the lifts went dead so we had to walk down the 24 flights from floor 11.
I just grabbed him! I terrified the poor man! But we all went out for Crab Cakes and - well - love you two very much!
Nathan                                                                                                         Jenesta

Just round the corner from the hotel - Wharf 7 Taxi Point


 25th Sept and we headed over via Water Taxi to the Tourist Center on Pratt Street to take a guided bus tour which proved so informative that we used the information we gleaned from the tour guide Bob, to inform the rest of our visits during our stay. We had three weeks in Baltimore. There's so much to see and do there that three weeks wasn't enough time to pack in all the wonderful  sights but that bus tour gave us an idea of the city's many attractions and it was great just for orientation. We found restaurants that way. We found out walking routes close to the hotel, the Flag Museaum, Fort McHenry, Baltimore screens that we'd never have seen were it not for that tour. I recommend it.
That's Bob at the front


View from Water Taxi looking towards Pratt Street, Inner Harbour 1

You can see our hotel here to the right of that grey stantion, the high rise pink brick building in the background. An easy walk away from the Pick-up point.