Baltimore's a pretty sizeable city with a whole lot of unique vibes. Starting from UMB you can go in almost any direction and find something interesting, especially with some street smarts in hand.

For two things that are a reasonable walk/bike/bus ride south from UMB, I might recommend the American Visionary Art Museum and Baltimore Museum of Industry, both are great and have plenty of other cool stuff nearby

My partner lived over there for a little while and was generally fine - heard gunshots once or twice, but by and large it's just a neighborhood. No attempted break-ins or anything. Lot of JHU kids live there, and my car never got broken into or anything on the dozens of nights I parked on the street

they re-did the food contractor recently, it's actually edible now (though kinda pricey for what it is, not actually the worst deal in the Inner Harbor IMO)

there are some great roads if you drive north into Pennsylvania and avoid highways - I drove to a corn maze called Maize Quest last weekend and the scenery of North Maryland is incredible. The Susquehanna River area up past Bel Air is also a great day trip with some wild driving roads

And even Asheville's changed a bunch over the last couple decades, that tiny real estate market means that a lot of the good cheap spots close to downtown got bought up by folks with NYC money even pre-pandemic, let alone post-