We spent a snowy afternoon eating and shopping in the Fell’s Point neighborhood of Baltimore City.

If you’re stumbling upon this blog for the first time, welcome! I have a lot of regular readers that I know about and cherish from the bottom of my heart, but for those who are just stopping by for the first time: my name is Ashley. I work on this blog as a little outlet from my job and life as a writer, which is awesome, but I used to work professionally as a film critic and wanted a space to keep going with that practice.

I tend to write about lifestyle, movies, books, and television. Today’s blog post is in the travel category, as the theme of fall and winter 2025 for me has been self-care and learning how to adjust to my new job. At the time of writing this (this blog post is definitely coming out much later though), I’ve been there about four months and feel pretty comfortable with everything going on.

Anyways, today’s blog post stems from a series of friend dates my friend and I have been going on. Once upon a time we used to only meet every six months, as she lived in Tampa and I was in New York City, but when the COVID-19 pandemic happened we ended up both moving back to the Baltimore area and eventually grew closer in the sense where we hung out more often.

Throughout the later half of 2025 we went on a lot of little friend dates here and there. Today we decided to venture into Fell’s Point, which is a very hip neighborhood in Baltimore City, to go to Affogatto, a new cat cafe that opened up in the past year (at the time of typing this).

I had been to cat cafes in South Korea before, as I’ve lived in Korea on and off throughout the years, but never in the United States. So she picked me up, we got a Lyft from her house, and ended up wandering throughout the Fell’s Point neighborhood. It’s such a cute area of the city, albeit a bit gentrified, and my friend hadn’t been around here in a long time. She was shocked at how nice it’s become—she hadn’t been downtown in this area for years.

Let’s get into what we did during our time there!

Affogatto Cafe is such a cute place to hang out with cats or get an Italian style drink.

The main reason we came here was to go to Affogatto, which, as I wrote before, is a new cat cafe in the area. Basically you can book a time slot in advance, and for about thirty minutes you can come and hang out with the cats in there.

We arrived a little bit earlier than when our reservation slot was, so we ordered some drinks. I picked up the pistachio latte, iced, while my friend got some Taharka Brothers ice cream and a cioccolata. She ended up putting the ice cream, which was graham cracker flavored, inside of her hot chocolate to sweeten it.

The pistachio latte was good, but it honestly wasn’t my favorite. We sat down with our drinks and started yapping, and they didn’t announce loudly when the next time slot was. That was my only complaint—we had no idea that it was 2 PM until a guy walked up to us and asked if we were the 2 PM slot, then we saw we missed five minutes of our slot. So basically we lost five minutes because as soon as the time was up we were told it was time to leave.

They had several kittens and two older cats when we in. At 2 PM it was nap time, but one of the cats immediately came up to me and started purring. It was so cute! The other cats were in a pile inside of the cat tunnel. They were all really furry, even though they did not come out and slept the entire time we were in there.

Once our time was up, we grabbed out drinks and headed out. We liked the cafe a lot and want to go back, although we did agree next time we probably wouldn’t get drinks. It wasn’t my favorite personally, although I know people who really like their drinks.

Fell’s Point is a haven for little boutique stores, bars, and shopping.

The cafe is only five minutes from the historic section of Fell’s Point on the water, so when we wrapped up at the cafe and cat lounge, we walked over to the water. The day before it had snowed, but on this day it wasn’t too cold and we were able to enjoy the water views and cobblestone streets more than we could have any other day in the winter.

We spent about three hours wandering around the stores in Fell’s Point overall. There are a lot of little boutique stores you can pop in and out of throughout the area. My friend purchased some candles from a random shop we wandered into, and then we kept going in and out of other stores.

My personal favorite is E.C. Pops. It’s a bit of a gift shop that’s themed towards Baltimore and Maryland themed merchandise, and my sister always told us about the one in Howard County. I wanted to get a Baltimore sticker while I was in there, but I didn’t check the price while picking it up. I ended up paying over $9 for that sticker, which was fine because I could afford it, but man that was a shock when the employee rang it up.

We also briefly stopped inside of Pitango because my friend wanted to see if they had any bread for sale, but then they didn’t have any in the case, so we left. At around 3:30 PM we walked to our next destination: Sacré Sucré.

Sacré Sucré’s new space and cafe in Fell’s Point is gorgeous to sit and chat in.

I had been to the original location of Sacré Sucré before with my sister, but when we were walking on the street I saw their new location on our way. I asked my friend if we wanted to stop and get some tea

We ended up ordering two macarons, two teas, an almond based cake, and a poached pear tart. It came out to about $40, and we were shocked when we were handed two entire tea pots. Of the two we ordered (guava and papaya berry), I preferred the guava tea and kind of wished I could have that one at home.

The macarons were good and the poached pear dessert, but neither of us cared for the other cake we got. For me it was a bit too dense, and we ended up only eating half. I took the rest home and offered it to my parents, but they didn’t really want to eat it either.

The inside of the cafe is really nice. I remember the old location barely had any room to sit, but this new location definitely solves that problem. There were plenty of comfortable seats and even along a little bar. The only thing I noticed is that the guy taking our orders had really weird vibes and was acting kind of strange towards us while we were ordering, which was noteworthy to me because of how out of place it was.

Anyways, we stayed in there until 4:15, then walked to our next destination: the line for food at Ekiben.

Ekiben is always one of the best places to eat in Baltimore City.

Ekiben was our last stop of the day, as I wanted my friend to try their food. We arrived three minutes before their reopening, so my friend and I got into the line and then patiently waited for our turn. We ordered the tempura broccoli, tofu brah bowl, spicy chicken bowl, a yuzu white peach drink, and a strawberry matcha drink.

It took about fifteen minutes for them to prepare our food, then we got a Lyft back home. This Ekiben location has a few bar tables you can sit and eat at, but most people tend to get takeout like us. I honestly wouldn’t recommend eating inside because of how little space there was, especially since people who were waiting for their food were sitting at the seats rather than people who wanted to actually eat in.

My personal favorite is the tofu brah bowl and tempura broccoli out of everything on the menu, and I was quite happy to eat just those. The spicy chicken was a little too spicy for me, even though I handle spice really well. We had enough food that I was able to pack some up and take a pretty hefty lunch to work on Monday.

And that was the rest of our day! It was a cute little girls’ day, and I already can’t wait for the next time I’m downtown.

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