Urban Solutions

Hey all, we made it back to Nashville safe and sound. Obviously I'm little behind posting but it came down to a couple of choices: walk on the beach or blog. Crab cakes or blog. Local flavor, homegrown beer, dog beach - or blog. I made an executive decision to live first and blog later so here we are.

In Baltimore, we stayed in a perfectly wonderful hotel (Hotel Monaco) on Charles St. It was smack in the middle of downtown and when morning came there, I got dressed as usual but instead of starting the coffee and casually walking out in the yard with Stella and the cat, we had to get on an elevator, ride ten floors down, speak to the bellmen, step out into the morning rush hour traffic and beat feet up to Liberty Dog Run, two and a half blocks away. I wasn't familiar with the whole idea of a dog run exactly. I was fascinated by the fact that there was a strip of fenced in grass carved into the middle of four busy streets in which neighborhood and visiting dogs could relieve themselves. Stella was pretty suspicious about the whole thing. She tiptoed around most of the time, overwhelmed by the smells and sounds inside and around the fence. We did meet some nice local people there though and each morning (with some encouragement) she did her thing at the dog run instead of on the sidewalk or at the carpeted entryway to the nearby Wyndham Baltimore Hotel. Actually that was a pretty close call a couple of times.

On the subject of coffee, I had hoped to find a coffee shop downtown where both humans and canines could hang out. We didn't find one (that doesn't mean there weren't any) but even if we had, there's the problem of going inside to order. Those traveling alone with a dog have the option of tying the dog to a lamp post or whatever (not an option in our case), or finding some dog loving soul to babysit for a few minutes. We did find one that would let you bring a dog inside to order but only if it was a dog you could carry. Naturally, I gave it some serious consideration but decided take Stella on back to the hotel instead.


View from the gate; loved the architecture in Baltimore.