A Day in Baltimore City (April 2026)

We went to Fort McHenry during the cherry blossoms’ peak bloom and Patterson Park for burritos.

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If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

Ever since I studied abroad in South Korea in the summer of 2024, I’ve been trying to write blog posts for the little things I do, even if it’s going across town for a fun little day. When I was studying abroad in Busan my Korean teacher would show us these Naver (a Korean search engine) blogs random people would make documenting visiting parks or bakeries, and I loved that energy.

I think the Internet is a cluttered place, so even if no one reads this at the end of the day, it’s a cute little time capsule for as long as we have electricity—or my credit card stops paying for this domain. I recently started a job, at the time of typing this, and I’m finding one of the ways that I’ve continued to stay sane is by going on little side quests here and there.

It’s incredibly privileged to have the money to buy cute little treats and head out with people somewhere, so I’m forever grateful that I’m currently in a situation where I can afford such things. Sometimes I go hiking to offset the costs of doing fun stuff, other times I find myself a little over budget and have to eat out less when it comes to work lunches and whatnot. I don’t take any of this for granted!

Today’s blog post is centered on a side quest my sister and I went on. She had gone to see the cherry blossoms in Washington D.C. a week before, but we wanted to go and check out the peak blooms over at Fort McHenry. I hadn’t been to the area ever since I was in elementary school, but right outside the fort, in the park, the viewing areas and trails are free.

So we headed over at 9 AM in the morning to try and beat any crowds. And, much to our surprise, we actually ended up finding the park to not be crowded at all! This was such a pleasant surprise.

Let’s get into what we did throughout the day.

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Fort McHenry’s cherry blossoms are such a hidden gem and less crowded than their DC counterparts.

As I wrote before, we left for Fort McHenry around 9 AM and arrived a little bit after 9:30 AM. We were scared about the parking situation, as it was a Saturday, but when we arrived there was plenty of parking on the roped off grass and volunteers directing us where to go. By the time we left around 10:30, though, it was starting to really get full.

You can enter the park through the side trails or through the main building. We ended up going through the main building, and right on the other side they had a tent where they were giving out free pins and stamps (those you had to pay for). After we did a loop of the entire grounds we went back for the pins, which declared us Cherry Blossom Defenders.

The first patch of cherry blossoms is right outside the main building before you go in. We stopped there first for pictures, but the main groves are beyond the building and on the water. There were a lot of families sitting on picnic blankets, a food truck, and benches along the water where you can sit and take in the view.

My sister was commenting about how much less crowded it was than Washington, which was apparently insane if you wanted any pictures to yourself. Here you could get an entire tree to yourself for like ten minutes without anyone walking in front of the frame, which was ideal if you’re looking for a photoshoot.

After we took our photos, we walked around the grounds then headed out. We wished the burrito spot we wanted to go to opened earlier, as we could have brought our burritos here and ate them, but if we had waited later to come I could imagine it would be so much more crowded maybe. We came at a good time.

Patterson Park is a great spot to hang out and picnic, and Mystic Burrito is one of the best Mexican spots in the city.

Once we finished at Fort McHenry, we headed back to the car and drove towards the eastern side of town. We stopped quickly at the north end of Patterson Park because, despite me growing up in the area my entire life, I had never seen the pagoda in the park. I took a few photos and then we headed back to the car to venture to the opposite side of the park.

Then we stopped at Mystic Burrito, which has been a place I’ve wanted to eat at for so long. I’ve had it saved on my Google Maps for a hot minute, and when I told my sister it was allegedly the best burrito it the city, she got curious and decided she wanted to try it too.

And that’s how we ended up sitting there waiting as they made them fresh. Everything is made to-order, and we went for the chicken burrito and a carne asada. It took about fifteen minutes for them to get our food ready (no one was in there, so it was probably good that they weren’t slammed), then the girl poured our fresh made horchata and jamaica into large cups.

We ended up taking them home to eat with a side of chips and salsa. Everything was so incredibly delicious. I genuinely thought that these burritos were just as good as the ones I would eat in San Diego. It’s a shame though that I don’t live in the neighborhood—or, maybe, that’s good for my wallet.

And that’s how we finished the day in the city! It was a fun excursion in Baltimore, which I’m growing to love more and more each day.

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