A quick trip to Philadelphia

So, school starts in earnest this week (my full schedule doesn't kick in till Thursday, thankfully), so I gotta get these posts up asap! 

First off: Philadelphia! Ari and I took a mid-week trip to the city of brotherly love from August 19 - 20th. I had hotel points from a credit card I'd signed up for, so we decided to spend a night in the city that I'd only been to briefly before (I visited mainly the historical part with Michelle and Liz back in spring 2014). I wanted to see the cool parts that I'd heard about, plus I'd heard good things about the vegetarian restaurant there, called Vedge. So we booked a night at the Holiday Inn Express, which is literally a 3-minute walk from Vedge. And despite originally planning to take Amtrak there like the old-world travellers we wanted to pretend to be, we discovered that Megabus tickets were literally 1/20 of the price ($100 vs. $5!!). So we caught a Megabus at 9:30am and got to Philly by 11:30am. 

Once we got dropped off in the city center, we walked directly to Reading Terminal Market to grab some lunch. We got there during peak lunch hour, which was a little overwhelming. But we managed to get a decent veggie burger and cheesy scalloped potatoes at Hunger Burger, and find a spot to sit down among all the crowded tables. 

Waiting for our food. Notice the large amount of people. 

After that, we did a combination of two self-guided mural tours that I heard about from Hannah, my friend from high school who currently lives in Philadelphia (but who was sadly out of town when we visited). Important note: the majority of what we did in Philly was a suggestion from Hannah. Thanks, Hannah! 

The murals were pretty cool to visit because they are all over the city, thanks to an initiative started in the 80s as an anti-graffiti strategy, and continuing today as the MuralArts Program. Apparently this program has painted more than 2,000 murals all over the city since 1984. 

On the day we visited, it was a sunny 90 degrees with about 80% humidity, but we actually had a really good time exploring the city through finding these murals. Some of the murals had basically no background information, while others had a phone number you could call to hear a recorded message about the painting.

This mural was one of the wackier ones. We didn't get any background info on this one, but I liked how colorful it was. 

We had to take a break after about an hour and half of trekking in the sun, and stopped in Chinatown to get some boba tea. (The people behind Ari look warped because this is a panoramic shot.) 

This mural was painted near an animal shelter; each animal painted on this wall depicts an actual rescue animal that was adopted. To finance the mural, pet owners entered a lottery to have their pet painted into the mural. 

We came upon this adorable street (there were actually many like it, this was just the first one we saw) called Quince Street. I wanted to live in this ivy-covered house. I made myself feel better about the situation by telling myself that the house's owners probably don't have very good air conditioning in the summer. And it's probably really drafty in the winter. So yeah. Not that great. 

After walking all around the city for about 4 hours, we finally checked into our hotel (we were just carrying backpacks) and took a refreshing shower and a quick nap before going out again for a cocktail before dinner. Our reservation wasn't until 9:30pm, so we didn't have to rush. 

We also grabbed a snack at about 5pm -- we went to this awesome Israeli hummus place called Dizengoff (Ari wholeheartedly approved of their pita bread) and then we went across the street to get a grapefruit brûlée donut at Federal Donuts.  

After resting up, we walked to a pop up garden which was pretty cool, although a little heavy on the bougie-hipster vibe. The idea is that this organization turns vacant lots into beer gardens for the summer. 

I had a very sweet honey-flavored cocktail (too sweet--I couldn't finish it.). I think Ari had a mojito. You can see a beautiful, rusty tub thing behind us, as proof that this was a hip spot. 

Then we went to Vedge! Where everything tasted pretty darn good. But my favorite part HAD to be the cocktail called "Effie, Brace Yourself." For those of you that may not be up to date on your Mrs. Doubtfire trivia (I just watched it with my students last May), that is one of the funniest lines from the film. And it was indeed a very bracing cocktail! 

Ari models his awesome drink. 

My picture of the food is not very photogenic, but I'll post it anyway, just to give people an idea. We had stuffed avocado for the appetizer (not pictured), a ratatouille squash thing (in the middle), spicy grilled tofu (on the left), fingerling fries (on the right), and for dessert we had rutabaga fondue (which was DELICIOUS and obviously tasted better than it sounds).

The next day, we had to catch a bus back to NYC at 2pm, so we had to plan how we wanted to spend the majority of the morning. I'd already been to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but it was supposed to be likely thunderstorms, so we decided to take a risk and and spend the $20 each to visit the Barnes Foundation. According to the website, it's "the greatest private collection of post-impressionist and early-modern art." I looked at that description and thought, "Well, Ari and I were just in Paris where we saw a ton of that art period at the Musee D'Orsay. Do we really need to see more of it?" Turns out, we did! The value of the experience was more in the way the art was displayed than in the art itself. Barnes (the collector) arranged all of the art according to his tastes and preferences, and he did it in a very unique and quirky way. Artists from totally different time periods and parts of the world are hung next to each other, and it is all kind of packed together, so that you walk into a fairly small room and aren't really sure which of the thirty paintings to look at first. I recommend taking a look at the website if you want to get an idea what it's like, since they don't allow any photos to be taken inside. 

After we had spent a couple hours at the museum, we had just enough time to grab lunch and then head to the bus station. As luck would have it, Pizzeria Vetri (another Hannah rec!) was literally right across the street from the Foundation. We dashed over there and ordered an eggplant and stracciatella pizza. And it did not disappoint. As Ari remarked on the bus ride home, the bread products were really the highlight of our trip to Philadelphia. 

All in all, a wonderful 36-hour (or less, actually) trip to a city that's only an hour and a half away. We left Philly thinking we should do that more often--both visit Philly and travel to destinations that are convenient and easy to explore on foot. Next on the list: maybe Hoboken? 

Hope to see you next time, little guy!