Last week, one of our friends was going to make a trip to Annapolis to drop his cousin enroute to New York city . He invited Seejo and me to join him so that we could make a day of it. Sometimes, when you travel all over the country and “see†the must see sights, you miss some of the wonderful local sights. Isn’t it strange to think that after being a Maryland resident for more than 5 years, I haven’t been to its capital city? Even though the capital is touted as a historic city and is not more than 50 miles away. Anyway this weekend I got a chance to remedy that mistake.
Annapolis is a port city, situated at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay . Like many other “historic citiesâ€, it is a quaint city with cobbled streets, with old and new buildings architected to look like they could recite history if you wanted to hear closely. Our visit to Annapolis coincided with the concluding day of the Maryland Maritime Heritage Festival. Annapolis is called America ‘s sailing Capital, a fact corroborated by the numerous little boats that dotted the bay. As part of the festival, there was a sailboat show , where sail-boat owners proudly displayed their machines. The waterfront was swarming with people of all ages , some with kids, some with dogs and some with both but all on a family outing. Interspersed between the colorful holiday crowd was the uniformed men and women of the American Naval Academy in their spotless whites.
Annapolis is the home of the United States Naval Academy , the educational institution for young undergraduate Marine Corp and currently, Annapolis ‘ renowned attraction. The other renowned attraction is the State Capital. Annapolis was once the capital of the United States , the state capital designated as a National Historic Landmark sitting high on a small hillock. It is the oldest state capitol to be still in used actively, this is still where Maryland ‘s capital city conducts its business.
We wandered around the boats on display, paused at the giant banners recruiting Marine and Naval candidates, posed at the Kunta Kinte memorial , where Alex Haley ‘s ancestor first landed on American soil as a slave shipped from Gambia . We finally made out way to the real reason we had all come down here : Crabs! Maryland ‘s contribution to the culinary world is its crab-cakes: patty made from lump crab meat of the famous blue-crabs from the Chesapeake bay . Yummy!! We had a late lunch at Buddy’s Crabs & Ribs where we had a creamy crab dip, Crab soup (apparently voted best soup in Maryland sea-food festival and endorsed by all of us!!) , Crab pasta, crab cakes and for a change a scallop, shrimp and oyster platter. Highly recommended!
After that we walked off the lunch with a walk to the State capitol to the accompaniment of several crabby jokes! By the time we saw the State Capitol , St. Anne’s church , walked up and down one of the country fairs and reached back to the ferry wharf it was perfect time for an ice-cream. We stopped at the Storm Brothers Ice cream factory—supposedly an Annapolis favourite. Judging by the long queue winding into the shop, a lot of people believed it. The ice-cream was good but Cold stone creamery still gets my vote. But you can always enjoy an icecream, especially when you are listening to foot-tapping Caribbean music that was performed by two energetic vocalists as part of the concluding act in the Maritime Heritage festival.
It was the conclusion of the day for us too….! Time to tick off the capital of Maryland of my list of places to see!
