Every summer I take a four or five day baseball trip. The calculus is normally fairly simple – where can my airline points get me and where is there a decent deal on a nice hotel. As long as there’s baseball and summer nights with a cold beer in my hand, the teams and the city don’t matter too much. While I was planning my trip this year, I had more trouble than normal finding a combination that would work in my schedule. I went through permutations for Milwaukee, St. Louis, Denver, San Diego, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit and a host of other cities until I found that the only place my about to expire United points would get me to was Baltimore. Never really had any desire to visit Baltimore, but Camden Yards and the promise of four days of fresh crab was too good to pass up.

After flying on a red-eye flight through Toronto and sleeping in Pearson for a couple of hours (using points isn’t always glamorous), I arrived in Baltimore slightly jet-lagged, but happy to walk into Camden Yards – a temple of baseball on a scorching hot Saturday night. She’s a beauty ballpark.

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