Hotel at a Glance: Holiday Inn Baltimore-Inner Harbor (Downtown)

This Holiday Inn is a convenient home base for travelers visiting Maryland’s largest city. From the hotel, you can walk to the National Aquarium or the Maryland Science Center in less than 20 minutes. You’ll also be less than a mile from M&T Bank Stadium, home of Baltimore’s pro football team.

• In-room amenities: free WiFi, a microwave, and a mini fridge
• Buttermilk flapjacks are on the menu at the onsite Eden West Restaurant & Lounge, which serves Maryland crab cakes later in the day.
• Grab a coffee from Dottie’s Café, located in the hotel lobby. 
• Work up a sweat in the sauna or the 24-hour fitness center, then relax in the indoor pool.

Baltimore, Maryland: World-Class Museums and Historic Waterfront Neighborhoods

Baltimore’s Inner Harbor—a busy port that was redeveloped as a tourism district in the mid-20th century—has become one of the city’s best-known and most beloved landmarks. Water taxis ferry visitors from one historic, cultural, or family-friendly attraction to another. Sites along the routes include the star-shaped Fort McHenry (where US forces repelled the British during the War of 1812, inspiring Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner”) and restaurants where you can sample the city’s famous crab cakes.

You’ll find several unique museums here, too, from the National Aquarium—which houses more than 16,000 sea creatures in realistic habitats—to the wonderfully oddball American Visionary Art Museum, one of the country’s leading institutions for outsider art. For a stunning view of the skyline, the Inner Harbor, and Chesapeake Bay, head up to the 27th floor of the Baltimore World Trade Center, where you can see the city from 360 degrees at the observation deck.

Baltimore is made up of many little neighborhoods, each with its own personality. Mount Vernon, one of the oldest, has been a fashionable part of town since one of the country’s first monuments to George Washington was built here in 1829. Today, the neighborhood’s elegant 19th-century townhouses share space with The Walters Art Museum and the Lyric Opera House. In Fell’s Point, lively taverns and restaurants line the cobblestone streets of this waterfront district that was a pit stop for sailors in the 1700s.

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