Tours in Annapolis

Baltimore Helicopter Services whisks their clientele away from the workaday hubbub of gridlocked traffic with the help of their fleet of luxurious charter helicopters. With a service area ranging from Norfolk to New York, the choppers can transport passengers to Pittsburgh in just 90 minutes. Taking off from their helipad located near Inner Harbor, the first-class helicraft also zip through city tours promising unobstructed sky-high sightlines, helping passengers snap shots of skyline residents including the Legg Mason Building, the Baltimore World Trade Center, and the 70-story statue of Cal Ripken, Jr.

Committing their enterprise to eco-friendly tourism, the women at SegZone Tours guide visitors through the historic streets of Annapolis, along the city waterways of Dover, and around the track at Dover International Speedway—all aboard segways. For groups or private parties, tour leaders can also focus excursions on local gardens, architecture, and wildlife in areas often unreachable by car or paraglider. They also guide themed seasonal tours, such as rides along haunted-house routes or past holiday-light displays. With an eye toward safety, staff members always provide thorough instruction on riding before tours or rentals, though they often give customers license to race or argue over whose segway would look better with flames painted on the side. When not leading guided excursions for customers or school groups, the team organizes corporate team-building events as well as indoor obstacle courses for recreation.

Historic Annapolis at St. John’s College preserves and celebrates the area’s rich social and political history with tours of the colonial city and its landmark homes. The nonprofit group restored the Paca House & Garden, National Historic Landmark, to its colonial-era glory so that visitors could wander the rooms and gardens and travel back in time to an era teeming with revolutionary political ideas and patriotism. A historical museum holds exhibits that illuminate the past, such as a six-foot-by-six-foot model of 18th-century Annapolis and a wormhole to Ben Franklin’s kite shop. At Hogshead at 43 Pinkney Street, living history presentations immerse visitors in the language and thoughts of long-ago citizens. Historic Annapolis also hosts a variety of public events, from historical interpreters presenting on colonial life to summer camps for burgeoning history buffs.

Annapolis Ghost Tours' thrill-seeking guides lead walking ghost tours and pub crawls around the city's historical district, examining and explaining the lives of its long-dead citizens while occasionally enjoying each pubs' choicest sips. Tours eventually wind their way to the graveyard, where a guide recounts spine-tingling tales of the buried dead and their favorite back scratchers. They also lead craft-brewed beer tours and historic pub crawls that fill tour goers' heads with titillating tales of the Founding Fathers and the drinking game that wrote the Constitution.

Parker Jones worked his way from the ground up to helm Capital Bicycle, which first opened in 1970. He started his career at Capital in 1996 as a once-a-week employee looking to get a good deal on parts and escape the mournful howls of his neglected sedan, but within months he became a store mechanic. A year, he later took control of the entire store, and ultimately, he became its sole owner.

Jones set out to expand the shop’s services in both scope and size, and today, Capital resides in a 4,000-square-foot shop and is one of the region’s first concept stores for California-based bicycle manufacturer Specialized. Customers flock to the shop to purchase Specialized bikes and Bellwether apparel, and they can find their ideal bicycle fit with the help of an in-house certified body-geometry technician. Capital also fosters its own cycling community with a schedule of group rides and helps cyclists to keep tabs on other local events.

Monumental Helicopters’ fleet of choppers offers clientele breath-nabbing views of eastern Maryland and the sea beyond. The compact R44 Clipper comes equipped with floats for water landings into arch nemeses' swimming pools. The aircrafts’ routes fly around Baltimore, taking in the city's sites. Though not included in this Groupon, tours also zigzag between Baltimore, Washington, and Annapolis and even embark on custom tours that soar anywhere within 25 miles of Haysfield Airport.