I spent the day eating, drinking, and wandering around Baltimore City.

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.

Today’s blog post comes from a little side quest my friend and I did on my birthday in July 2026. Up until this day I had actually never really gone out on my birthday, so this was something that was completely new. It was also a time to enjoy each other’s company, as I’ll be going to Korea for ten months.

Let’s get into what we did! We spent the day in downtown Baltimore, as we had planned an entire itinerary that day surrounding Inner Harbor and Fell’s Point.

Sagamore Distillery is a great spot on Baltimore Peninsula to sit by the water and enjoy a drink.

Once my friend picked me up, we got a short Lyft to Baltimore Peninsula. I had been there previously for the Asian Food Festival that happens by the water, which is where I had discovered Sagamore. I told my friend about it, which is why we came here.

Usually you can book a tour of the distillery itself, but we didn’t do that today. We want to do it another time, but today we just poked around the gift shop, didn’t buy anything, then got drinks at the cocktail bar. At noon on a Friday it was empty and we had the entire place to ourself.

Once we got our drinks we sat outside by the water. On a nice day this is such a fantastic spot to catch up with friends, as it’s super chill and you can just sit in a lawn chair by the water. We savored our drinks, then closed our tabs and took a walk along the water to the Under Armour HQ.

We didn’t go inside, but if you’re in the area and like Under Armour they have a big store attached to the headquarters. As we finished up here, we caught a Lyft and headed to Affogato.

Pitango in Fell’s Point has incredible sandwiches—with the shopping and vibes to match around the area.

On 2:30 this day we had booked a time slot for Affogato, which is an Italian-style cat cafe located in Fell’s Point. For $10 (which goes to charity) you can sit in the back room and pet the cats for about thirty minutes. Today, they have a bunch of kittens that were siblings, and they were definitely ready to play.

We unwound by petting the cats and playing with them, then headed out into the smoky afternoon to walk to the water. Affogato is only about a five minute walk from the harbor, so we then grabbed a sandwich at Pitango. I got the Red, which is tomato foccacia, prosciutto, mozzarella, and avocado as a sandwich.

My friend was a doubter about the sandwich, but as we sat on a bench by the water, we both agreed it was a very good sandwich. From that point on we walked around Fell’s, popping into shops and seeing what was up with the neighborhood. I saved a few restaurants I spotted, too.

The National Aquarium is half off on Fridays, making it the perfect evening out.

We did the 25 minute walk from Fell’s to Inner Harbor next, which is something I’ve never actually done. We were a bit early for the half-off Friday at the aquarium, so we sat and chilled by the water for about thirty minutes before heading over to buy our $25 tickets. There was a bit of a line, but it moved fairly quickly.

The aquarium was pretty crowded, so it was a bit hard to see some of the exhibits, especially the section on Maryland’s native fish and plants. The sloths were also out and eating in the rainforest section, which made it hard to get through some sections because everyone was gawking at them.

This is such a cute spot to go on a Friday night though! I really enjoy going to the aquarium, but it’s too expensive to go outside of a Friday night for me. If you take your time you could easily spend 2-3 hours in here, as we left after 2.5 hours to go to our dinner reservation.

La Barrita is one of my favorite spots in the city to get a fresh steak.

For our final affair of the evening, we had an 8 PM reservation at La Barrita. I would recommend a reservation if you don’t want to sit at the bar, as all of the normal tables were completely full. There were a couple of spots left at the bar.

We were seated immediately in the corner, then we started off with white sangrias. Those were so delicious and dangerous—although not as good as the passion fruit one I had on a beach in Portugal. We were then served the free bread and chimichurri, which was fine, not really a standout.

Our main meal was the Paradilla x2. Now let me tell you: this could feed multiple people, not just you. The steak was absolutely incredible and the fries were delicious, but my friend and I were only able to make a dent in this meal. We took the leftovers home and I split half of my leftovers with my mother—that’s how much food we had.

I absolutely adored this meal and the atmosphere though. My friend told the waiter it was my birthday, but that we didn’t want fanfare. He dropped off a panqueques with dulce de leche stuffed inside with a candle. We devoured that then headed home for the evening.

All in all, this was such a great day! Definitely steal this agenda if you get the chance.

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