Visiting Philly and Baltimore from the UK

March 31, 2008

Hi all,

We're coming over from Britain and visting Toronto, Philly and Baltimore for a baseball road trip in early April to see our beloved Blue Jays take on the Red Sox and A's in Toronto, the O's in Baltimore, and to see the Cubs and Phillys in Philly (and so Helen can achieve her life's ambition of having her photo taken with the Phanatic!).

We obviously want to combine this with some (lots!) of caching (and get a couple of benchmarks in the process).

We'll be staying downtown in Philly for a day and a half or so and plan to see the Liberty Bell, the Mint and the USS New Jersey.

We'll have about the same amount of time in Baltimore and will be based in the inner harbour area. We hope to visit the USS Constellation and possibly the aquarium.

On the way down we plan to visit Lackawanna Coal Mine and on the way back to Toronto we'll be nipping through Gettysburg, Harrisburg and Reading (to visit Cabelas!). Between Philly and Baltimore we're hoping to visit the Ordnance museum at Aberdeen Proving Grounds (Mike can't get enough tanks and they've just repained the Elephant!)

We have a few questions we hope you can answer for us;

Are there any 'must do' caches in Baltimore or Philly?

Are there any 'must do' tourist attractions in either city that are not on the above list?

How safe are the two cities? (Baltimore in particular seems to have quite a teriffying reputation!)

Where can we get the 'ultimate'/'best'/'most original' cheese steak?

Many thanks,

Helen and Mike

38.2k · March 31, 2008

I'm not familiar with the caches in either area, but as far as safety, they are about as safe as most other large cities (and safer than some). Stay around the business/tourism districts, don't go wandering off into dark side streets and walk like you have a purpose, rather than sauntering about, looking around like a tourist, and you should be safe.

March 31, 2008

I was in Philly on business a few months ago and my favorite cache while I was there was Stars and Flowers Forever (GC7BA9). It's located in Valley Forge, which is a pretty significant location in American history.

1.3k · March 31, 2008

If you're going to be in Downtown Baltimore you should be fine. Parking is very tough (in my experience that seems to be a mark of a nice neighborhood) but the area is safe. Outside of the nice downtown areas however, some of those neighborhoods were the scariest I've been in, so I'd advise keeping to the touristy nice spots.

Annapolis, just south of Baltimore is one of my favorite cities. Very cute little port city. The naval academy is actually open to the public as a park, and has several caches placed in it. I really enjoyed that.

April 1, 2008

In Philly you should see or at least walk over to and around the Art Museum.

The zoo is really nice if you are into zoo's and Fairmount Park is nice too.

Not sure about caches.

Of course Pat's Steaks and Geno's are the famous steak places but I think you can get just as good of one if not better (and they dress it for you) in any local sub shop. Last summer I was at Geno's with my nephew and some of his friends and they had a bigotted sign in the window about not serving people who didn't speak english. One of the young men refused to eat there.

So much for the City of Brother Love.

1.7k · April 1, 2008

Last summer I was at Geno's with my nephew and some of his friends and they had a bigotted sign in the window about not serving people who didn't speak english. One of the young men refused to eat there.

So much for the City of Brother Love.

The signs says "This is America, when ordering please speak english." It does not say anything about refusing service and the sign was brought to the attention of a city review board and a review board has yet to make a descison.

The sign went up when illegal aliens held massive marches asking for citzenship, it was counter protest to the march in Los Angeles where tens of thousands of illegal aliens demanded citzenship, chanting in Spanish and waving Mexican flags.

Edited April 1, 2008 by magellan315

April 2, 2008

Last summer I was at Geno's with my nephew and some of his friends and they had a bigotted sign in the window about not serving people who didn't speak english. One of the young men refused to eat there.

So much for the City of Brother Love.

The signs says "This is America, when ordering please speak english." It does not say anything about refusing service and the sign was brought to the attention of a city review board and a review board has yet to make a descison.

The sign went up when illegal aliens held massive marches asking for citzenship, it was counter protest to the march in Los Angeles where tens of thousands of illegal aliens demanded citzenship, chanting in Spanish and waving Mexican flags.

To a 24 year old kid of mixed ethnicity and no knowledge of the reason it looked like bigotry.

I ate there and so did the rest of the group. However I did not think the cheesesteaks were particularly fantastic and was annoyed to have to put my own ketchup on.

But thanks for clearing that up