One thing that I really enjoy the most when I travel around the United States is to visit the downtown areas of each major city.
Visiting downtown tells me a little about the place, and usually it is nice, clean and very well kept.
Baltimore is the largest city in the state of Maryland, and the 26th largest city in the country. Founded in 1729, Baltimore is the second largest seaport in the Mid-Atlantic United States and is situated closer to Midwestern markets than any other major seaport on the East Coast.
Visiting Baltimore, I took a tour of the place, and found it beautiful, full of life, buildings, businesses.
I particularly enjoyed the Inner Harbor in the Camden Yards Sports Complex which is the home of the baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles.
Although there was no game that day I took a walk around the giant stadium learned about its history.
When Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened on April 6, 1992, a new era of Major League Baseball began. The park was brand new, but still old-fashioned. State-of-the-art, yet quaint. At less than a day old, it was already a classic.
Oriole Park at Camden Yards ballpark inspired a generation of construction. No longer would communities across America build multipurpose stadiums devoid of character, surrounded by vast parking lots.
Camden Yards captured the nation’s attention from day one and in the 20 seasons that followed, has served as the standard by which all new ballparks are measured.
Citizens of Baltimore and all of Maryland, as well as Orioles fans throughout Birdland, take great pride in the fact that their team makes its home in the ballpark that changed baseball forever.
And of course I could not leave without my Baltimore Orioles t-shirt.
Likewise, I had the opportunity to visit one of the prestigious universities in the United States, John Hopkins University.
Baltimore shifted to a service-oriented economy, with the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University serving as the city’s top two employers.
According to the Brookings Institution, almost a quarter of the jobs in the Baltimore region are science, technology, engineering and math positions.
The Baltimore Area is known for health and science, which is in part attributed to the prestigious Johns Hopkins University school system.
The institution pioneered the concept of the modern research university in the United States and has ranked among the world’s top such universities throughout its history.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has ranked Johns Hopkins #1 among U.S. academic institutions in total science, medical and engineering research and development spending for 31 consecutive years.
As of 2011, 37 Nobel Prize winners have been affiliated with Johns Hopkins over the course of 120 years. The university’s research has been ranked as the third most cited of any institution globally, earning it a far-reaching reputation as one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
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