Annapolis & Blue Crabs

I had heard a lot about Annapolis, MD and it's famous blue crabs.  Being from the south, I've always loved seafood and really wanted to see what this crab was all about.  We planned a trip up to Annapolis, which is only a short drive from DC, in order to see the sights, do a little shopping and find a good crab place for lunch.  

When we drove into town, I immediately fell in love with it.  Annapolis is a gorgeous place with a historical small town feel.  We walked around the downtown shops and did some window shopping, then we made our way down to the harbor.  We ended up taking a boat tour around the harbor that told us the history of the area and some fun historical facts about the U.S. Naval Academy.   If you ever visit Annapolis, I suggest taking the boat tour.  It's short, but very interesting. After the boat tour we went to check out the Naval Academy, whose campus was beautiful.  

After doing a little sightseeing, we checked out Yelp for some ideas for a great crab place.  I don't recall the name of the place we ended up going to, but it was a little bit of a drive and it was sort of in a neighborhood on the water.  I had never ordered these crabs before, but luckily I was with a pro who ordered a bunch for the table to share:

As you can see, the crabs come with a ton of Old Bays seasoning on them.  Old Bay isn't as huge in the south as it is up here.  We might use it on seafood from time to time, but up here it's a seafood staple.  A friend of mine from Maryland even introduced me to "crab crackers" and crab chips-- yum!    The crabs also come with melted butter and vinegar for dipping.  

Here comes the hard part...  They give each person a little hammer and a special knife to eat the crabs.  Man, I thought eating snow crabs was tedious!  You have to go through a bunch of different steps in order to open the crabs, remove their lungs and start finding the meat.  It was a lot of work, but they tasted great!