Although I’ve mentioned it on other posts from this trip to America I’ll repeat it again here: this was the trip that forever sends shivers down my spine. We’d needed to fly out from Heathrow early in the morning so we’d awoken at some horrible hour in the dark and grabbed the bags from the room where they’d been stored the evening before and headed off. And about halfway to the airport some tired part of my brain suddenly perked up and said:

Hey, remember how dark it was this morning? And remember how the room with the bags in has a black floor? And remember how the suitcases were bright yellow so you packed them in the car? And remember how the camera bag is black in a dark room on a black floor? Any recollection of picking that up?

The Trip Where I Forgot To Bring My Camera. Still horrifying to think about. I did have a camera as I’d put my older DSLR in a case on the slight chance that my wife might have wanted to use it. She never had before but there was always a first time. So, armed with not the camera I wanted and only the single lens it had on it plus my phone I was still able to take some shots but my photographic heart was never quite in the right place.

It was a lovely November day to visit Baltimore’s historic seaport and tourist attraction; clear skies and a clean crispness in the air. The transformation of the Inner Harbour from a dead and decaying, formerly-industrialised, shallow port abandoned by visiting vessels in the 1950s due to economic changes into a thriving spot for recreation became a model for waterfront renewal around the world. Parks and museums were erected and hotels and other attractions such as an aquarium and a science centre were built following a flood of tourism in the wake of the tall ships making a stop during the 1976 bicentennial celebrations.

Our interest was in the floating museum ships. Photos from three of the ships can be found in earlier travel portfolio posts here:

• USCGC Taney – the last floating survivor during the attack on Pearl Harbour
• USS Torsk – the American naval vessel to sink the last enemy ship in World War 2
• USS Constellation – the flagship of the Union’s anti-slave trade African Squadron in the American Civil War and the last sail-only warship built by the US Navy

We also visited the United States Lightship Chesapeake. If you’re as much a fan of sci-fi as me then you too will be disappointed to learn that the name has no bearing on its means of propulsion, instead referring to its use as a lighthouse. Launched in 1930 and used in World War 2 to protect Boston, Chesapeake, like all lightships, was mothballed in the 1960s as permanent lighthouses were built and automated buoys become more commonplace.

The only blot on the landscape of Baltimore’s otherwise attractive harbour area was the prevalence of homeless people there, some of whom we saw rifling through litter bins. This isn’t unique to Baltimore, of course – our visits to Washington D.C. were real eye-openers as to just how many homeless people there were, and every city around the world will have its share – but it is still something that simply shouldn’t be possible to happen in supposedly rich countries supposedly proud of their supposedly Christian values.

The last of the museums we visited was not a ship but was still maritime-themed, this being the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse. Built and first lit in the 1850s then rebuilt in wrought iron in 1875, this cylindrical, screw-pile lighthouse became automated in 1949 and was deactivated in 1988. It was then moved from its location at the mouth of the Patapsco River to one of the piers in the Inner Harbour and turned into a museum. While not very large and not containing an awful lot to see other than attractive views it did have a very entertaining custodian who was immensely pleased to discover we were not only from England but also from a historic naval city and we ended up talking to him for ages.

Our trip to Baltimore wasn’t a long one but the Inner Harbour was beautiful and there was plenty to see and do there for several more trips should we find ourselves visiting again.