Baltimore - Matthew's Pizza

The pizza is good. But if you're from NY, or maybe even Chicago, you know GREAT pizza. We tried this place, again because it was recommended in Mike Strzelecki's book "Baltimore With Children" and our son's name is Matthew. The place is a hole in the wall as Mike said. But how old are Mike's kids? There's no changing table here and the only other customer close to my childs age was a college kid that was sitting behind us studying! Not a single other family here and we were there for lunch watching customer after customer come in, eat, leave, come in, eat,....
The place has won all kinds of awards which leads me to believe Baltimore is no pizza capital and should stick to crab cakes.

Baltimore - Friendly Farm Resaurant

We read about the Friendly Farm Restaurant in Mike Strzelecki's book "Baltimore with Children." Why he would recommend driving 45 minutes from Downtown Baltimore I'll never know. He made the place sound great for kids, but we were the only young family there! EVERYONE else was older. That's a slight exaggeration, there was a couple that was perhaps in their 40s and a family with a teenager. The place sort of reminded me of a nursing home cafeteria. The farm land area was very pretty, but the signs reading "keep off the grass" kept us away. The food was NOTHING to write home about, I've had better steaks at chain restaurants. The highlight of the meal were the sweet rolls which were ok and the ice cream for desert (no sprinkles or whipped cream for the kids). Also, how many kids do you know that eat the sides the serve: pickled beets, coleslaw, cottage cheese, and apple butter? Mine don't. They are willing to try things, but this was not their cup of tea, or ours. NOT worth the trouble to drive out to nearly the Pennsylvania line! What were you thinking Mike?

Baltimore - National Aquarium

Beautiful. Well run. Clean and friendly! The exhibits were fantastic. Sure I'm partial to the New York Aquarium in Brooklyn, but this was nice. Make sure you check out the Australia exhibit and watch them feed the archer fish. We didn't stay for the dolphin show, but people were saying it was great. Wish they had some out door exhibits, because on a nice day you don't want to be couped up inside. This makes for a great rainy day activity.

Some comparisons:
The shark area is nice, but not as cool as Sea Worlds in San Diego or Orlando.
The NYC Aquarium requires you to be outdoors to get from exhibit to exhibit, like I said this place is totally indoors.
No walrus or seals at the National Aquarium.
Much cleaner facilities than NYC Aquarium or Sea World.

Baltimore's Paddleboats & Chessies

Bottom line, if it's a nice day, rent a boat. We had tons of fun. My son was so excited about "going on the dragon boat." We paddled around and got a great view of the harbor and got nice and close to the Torsk. Great experience. Period.

Baltimore - B and O Railroad Museum

The B & O (Baltimore and Ohio) Railroad Museum was another place we visited this week. Here's the real deal for kids. They have some awesome trains in the Roundhouse which I thought were impressive,as did my son. Don't think you can go on most of them though. Only about 5 train cars or locomotives are you actually allowed on. Our reason for going was the train ride you can take on the "first commercial railroad track in America." Sure the tracks may have been historic, but the train cars we sat in were from the MARC (Maryland's commuter train). There is nothing cool about that. My son was disappointed that the train didn't move faster than about a crawl. He wasn't the only disappointed one, many passengers said the same thing as we S-L-O-W-L-Y moved along. If you are a historic train buff, as many of the OLDER patrons were, it might be great. If not, take the MARC from Baltimore to D.C. and you'll have just as much, or more fun. FYI, we ride the Long Island Railroad and NYC subways somewhat frequently, so maybe that's why it wasn't so cool. On a positive the volunteers there were REALLY helpful and the place was VERY clean.