Inner Harbor Barnes & Noble Wi-Fi Review

After I had a nice lunch at the Baltimore Hard Rock Cafe, I walked next door to the Barnes & Noble located at 601 East Pratt Street in the Inner Harbor. The store is located in a former power station. The store has retained some of the huge piping and wooden floors from the former power station giving the store a nice character. In terms of Wi-Fi, once you press to connect to B&N under the Wi-Fi signals, a disclaimer may pop up. I don't remember if one did. I do remember I had fewer hassles hooking up to their Wi-Fi then I had when I tried to connect to the Wi-Fi at the Starbucks I tested in Columbia, Maryland. If you have a Nook e-reader like I do, the store will offer you free reading for up to 1 hour of a number of e-books. I didn't try it out so, I don't know how well it works or how vast the selection is. The store offers drinks for sale which can be nice while your surfing the web.

Overall, I was very pleased with this store. It was easy to connect to their Wi-Fi and, I had no serious hassles (see my review about Arundel Mills Mall). This is definitely an easy place to hook up to the web if you're in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Happy surfing all!

Baltimore Update

I got to visit Baltimore's Inner Harbor today. I rode my TMAX in and to my surprise, I found a parking space about a block from the Hard Rock Cafe. Parking was $2 an hour with a maximum stay of 2 hours. However, I doubt anyone would check if you ended up staying longer. As I came into the harbor area, I noticed there was a large warship tied up at one of the piers. It turned out to be the Brazilian training ship NE Brasil. The ship is supposedly 427 feet long so it is a good size ship. During its visit, they'll be offering free tours at set times and dates. I don't happen to know those. After looking over the ship, I walked back to the Hard Rock Cafe where I had a nice lunch and looked over their rock memorabilia collection. They have a bust of rubber hips Mick Jagger, a number of guitars including one by the rock group Slaughter, they had the shoes worn by Olivia Newton John in Grease, a movie poster from Elvis Presley's movie Girls! Girls! Girls! as well as other stuff. I bought one of the cafe's signature t-shirts. This one is from the rock group The Who and helps support the City of Hope which does research concerning cancer, diabetes and HIV/AIDS. 15% of the purchase price goes to that foundation. After lunch, I walked by the ESPN Zone on the way back to my bike and to my surprise, I found out it had closed on June 16th. It seems it and a number of other ESPN Zones had closed for reasons unknown to me. As it was in a prime location in the Inner Harbor, I wouldn't think it'll be long before some other big name restaurant moves in. We'll see on that. That's all for this update. Cheers all!

Baltimore Duck Tour

I've been wanting to do the Baltimore Duck tour for a while. I wanted to see how it stacked up against the Washington D.C. Duck tour. I thought the D.C. tour was nice but, the water portion was a total waste. As it turned out, the Baltimore tour was better even though it doesn't have all the historic monuments D.C. has. I got to see the first memorial built to honor George Washington. The tour drove by where Edgar Allan Poe, his wife and his mother-in-law are buried. Every year, on the day of his death, someone sneaks into the graveyard at night and places 3 roses and a bottle cognac at this tombstone. Everyone can figure out what the 3 roses represent but, no one understands what the cognac is for. There was also a touching memorial to the Holocaust.

The water portion of the tour was very nice. We got to see the U.S.S. Constellation, Lady Maryland and Pride of Baltimore ships. The guide told us about some of the construction going on close to the harbor. They're building a new hotel and a new office building. Lastly, we got to see some nice boats tied up at the various marinas. According to our guide Captain Joe, a number of boats are passing through Baltimore on their way south. They've been up in the waters of New England and the Great Lakes and were now making their way south to Florida, the Bahamas and possibly the Caribbean. It must be nice to be able to do that. I'd hate to think what it costs in terms of gas.

Overall, I was very pleased with the tour. Afterwards, I had a very nice lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. I like the Baltimore cafe because it's very easy to go to. It's in the Inner Harbor area and within walking distance. Cheers all!

U.S.S. Constellation

While visiting Baltimore's Inner Harbor earlier this week, I took a picture of the U.S.S. Constellation. The Constellation is one of a number of attractions they have at the Inner Harbor (I plan to tell of some of the others in future blogs). The ship is the only remaining U.S. Civil War ship afloat. It is also the last wooden warship the U.S. Navy built. Afterwards, the Navy built ships that were powered by steam. The ship is a sloop of war and carries 16 8-inch guns on its gun deck and various other guns on its main deck. The cost of admission is $8.75 for adults and $4.75 for children. For an additional fee, visitors can rent an electrical device that will tell you aspects of the ship at various points on the ship. During the summer months, reenactors tell of life onboard the ship and show how the guns were worked. The ship has been faithfully restored to how it would've looked during the Civil War. I've toured the ship and found it very interesting. It gives a nice glimpse of life on board a wooden warship (it was no bed of roses). For further information on the ship as well as other programs they offer see http://www.constellation.org.

Canon Rebel XTi Camera Outfit Review

In previous posts, I've mentioned that I was going to buy a Canon EOS 30-D digital camera. The camera had all the features I wanted with one significant drawback. It's very expensive. Because of the cost, I kept dithering about it. Then, this past weekend, I set up a meeting with a friend for lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The Inner Harbor has some interesting sights and I wanted to show them to those of you who read my blog. I have a Minolta Maxxum 7000 35-mm camera which takes fine pictures but, I would've had to have to shot an entire 24-picture roll of film and I didn't think there was that much stuff there I wanted to take pictures of. Also, it would've taken 3 or 4 days to get the pictures developed unless I wanted to pay for some 24-hour service. I felt using my Minolta would've been too much hassle. I decided it was time to buy a new digital camera.

I belong to two discount shopping clubs in Maryland: Sam's Club and Costco. I'd seen the digital camera display at Costco a number of times when I'd walked in and decided to see what they had. It turned out they had a nice Canon Rebel XTi camera outfit for $799. The outfit included camera body, battery, battery charger and an 18-55mm lens. The only thing I'd have to buy was a compact flash memory card. The camera had similar features to the 30-D with it being $400 cheaper and I could get my hands on it right now. I decided to buy it. This is the camera I used to take the picture of the Baltimore Hard Rock Cafe I posted yesterday. So far, it seems like a pretty decent camera. I look forward to using it so I can post some nice pictures of places around Maryland and where ever I travel to. I did learn after I took the Baltimore pictures that I needed to drop the resolution for photos I'll post here. All my Inner Harbor pictures came in at around 4 megs a picture. Yikes! Still, those of you who read this blog can now expect to see pictures "oooo" of Maryland and where ever else I end up traveling to. Hopefully, you'll enjoy them and they'll make this blog a bit more interesting. All text makes for a very boring blog. Cheers all!