On the way from the mucky hotel in the waterless Inner Harbour to our offices which are seemingly in the middle of nowhere this morning, the President of our USA division (who was giving Sarah and I a lift) told us that Baltimore had seen a downturn in its reputation over a period of ten years or so and had become known as the crime and drugs capital of the East Coast. The authorities had set about redressing the problems and part of that is a campaign that can be seen round the city still – huge black banners hang everywhere proclaiming ‘believe’. It appears to be working and the heart of the city looks in good shape to me.

After completing our training programme in the USA at 3pm and with four hours to kill before we needed to be at the airport for our flight, we headed downtown again and shopped for pressies for my colleague Sarah’s kids. This time we found water – the harbour certainly does exist even though I’m told it’s not a sea harbour as the sea is some twenty miles or so east of the city. It’s actually the Delaware river. A small factoid about my whistlestop tour….I went to six states, California, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware (just passing through on the train yesterday) and Maryland – blimey – that’s quite some trip in a mere fourteen days. When I have told my colleagues of the places I’ve been, they’ve been shocked we have been able to pack in so much. For my own peace of mind, I’d not try to do so much again. It’s too exhausting.

I hampered Sarah’s progress somewhat with my limp but we eventually found a little gift for each of her children in Barnes and Noble. I love book shops, they are places to be revered in my view so while she pondered which ‘My Little Pony’ book to buy for her little daughter, I found my way to the cookery book section and browsed the shelves looking at how to cook the American way. I was appalled to see the yards and yards of ‘low carb’ books proudly proclaiming you can eat as much saturated fat as you like but as long as you leave out pasta and bread from your diet you’ll be eating healthily. How screwed up are people’s minds if they believe that nonsense? It reminded me of the menu that was thrust into my hand in the grubby hotel this morning (why I trusted the cleanliness of their kitchens on the basis of their bedrooms I’m unsure as I write this). The menu item laughingly described as ‘the healthy choice’ was a three-egg omelette with a huge quantity of cheese and cooked in butter, served up with fried potatoes…..if that’s the healthy bit, heaven help the rest of their offerings.

Our search for toys was in the harbour area, where we wandered through the malls looking for a toy shop but were later told that Toys R Us have virtually wiped out ordinary toy shops across the USA. While we were walking, the tall ships caught my eye. One sailing out of the harbour, and two moored. This is a 150 year old American Warship.

So our trip to Baltimore ended with a hard earned quiet sit down on the balcony of a micro-brewery, overlooking the harbour for a glass of ‘Amber Wave’ – I love the micro-brewery tradition in the USA although I thought I heard the colleague who drove us to the airport later being critical of this culture. (My hearing is shocking so I can’t be sure if that was what he was saying to Sarah as we drove along!)

Given that I’d been hearing that Baltimore was a rotten place early this morning, I found it to be quite the reverse – a pretty, picturesque place, with more charm than many of the places I’ve seen. The hospitality of our team in Baltimore has been fabulous – in particular Steve who drove us around the place and took us to the Afghan restaurant last night. What a complete star of a man.

Last year I was suffering from the same stresses as I am now and the year before, I was away from home too - not a lot changes in my world