Philadelphia

The Lib­er­ty Bell in Philadel­phia, Pennsylvania.

Angela and I took a trip this past week­end to see a cou­ple of friends from grad­u­ate school who live near Philadel­phia. It was a sort of sur­prise for Chris for his birth­day, arranged by us and his wife Sal­ly. We hauled the two pooches with, so they could vis­it their pal Ellie (actu­al­ly, Mag­gie and she had­n’t met, but they got along okay). Chris was will­ing to spend his birth­day tak­ing us to do and see things Philly. The trip up there was pret­ty long, since we were caught up in D.C. traf­fic and then took a cou­ple of wrong turns on some coun­try roads in MD and PA (yes, there’s some very rur­al areas up there for you South­ern­ers who don’t know).

We start­ed the day off right at the Shady Maple Smor­gas­bord. Wow, this is got to be the world’s largest all-you-can-eat Amish smor­gas­bord. No seri­ous­ly. Hav­ing made-to-order pan­cakes is my kind of break­fast. I’m not much of a break­fast per­son, but two choco­late chip pan­cakes made right in front of you would make any­one start drool­ing. We all did quite well at the break­fast bars, both break­fast affi­ciana­dos and novices like myself.

We then pro­ceed on through the rain up to Cen­tral City Philadel­phia. We vis­it­ed the Lib­er­ty Bell and Inde­pen­dence Hall. We were quite lucky to get a very good tour guide. I’m sure that the tour last­ed 30 min­utes, but I could have lis­tened to him for anoth­er hour. Next, we walked over to the new Con­sti­tu­tion Cen­ter, but there in the spir­it of democ­ra­cy, we did­n’t have the major­i­ty votes to take the tour. Since the Mint was closed (and heav­i­ly secured , any­way) we head­ed on over to Read­ing Ter­mi­nal Mar­ket to get lunch and tool around the shops. There, we were able to get as offi­cial of a Philly Cheeses­teak as one can eat. Angela & I split one with fries, and Sal­ly & Chris did the same. We bare­ly had room after all those pan­cakes that morn­ing. We then walked on down to City Hall and the LO/VE sculp­ture (which is sur­pris­ing­ly small). Chris thought it a good idea to have us expe­ri­ence the Philly El while there, so we rode for a cou­ple of stops back to the car park.

Chris drove us over to Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty to show us where he spent sev­er­al years learn­ing engi­neer­ing and a love for the Mac. From there, we rode through West Philadel­phia and onto the more tony sub­urbs beyond. We got back in time for Sal­ly (with her love­ly assis­tant, Angela) to make an awe­some taco and bur­ri­to din­ner. Chris’ broth­er, Mom and her friend Ed came over to all help us in the cel­e­bra­tion of Chris get­ting one year old­er. A good time was had by all.

The next day we went out for brunch and then shop­ping around. Chris and Sal­ly end­ed up buy­ing a new patio set which even­tu­al­ly three struc­tur­al engi­neers (with the help of our love­ly assis­tant, Angela) were able to put togeth­er. Then, it was on back south to VA, although through much bet­ter traf­fic and no wrong turns. It was cer­tain­ly good to see some close friend again and see some of the cool stuff up in Philly. We’re already look­ing for­ward to our next trip up there.