Treading.net

This year’s Atlantic Antic street fair was less interesting than in previous years. Maybe I have a rose-colored recollection of past Antics, but this year was just filled with crappy street food vendors and cheap jewelry vendors (the kind of stuff you can get any day in SoHo or Union Square). I love mozzarepas (basically two arepas sandwiching a layer of and mozzarella cheese) as much as the next person, but what’s the point of a local festival if I can get food there that I can get at any dang street festival in the country?

Desperate to get out of the city for Labor Day weekend, I threw together a last-minute trip to Philadelphia. (Why Philly? Because I’ve never been, and have always been curious about it. It’s a short ride, by either train or bus, from NYC. I could still get a reasonably affordable hotel room that wasn’t crap. And DBF didn’t have a passport, preventing us from going to my first-choice destination, Montreal. But I digress.)

But first, the planning stages, which took input from DBF’s boss, three coworkers, and a coworker’s sister, a k a Philadubin. This made for an excellent trip. At first we were going to take Amtrak both ways, but all Monday evening passages back to NYC were booked. So we opted for the Greyhound, which was a horrifying proposition given the bus line’s propensity to kill its passengers, but the other alternative was a very expensive and hassle-filled car rental, which I was not up for. Me + driving during a holiday weekend in strange city + rusty parallel-parking skills + very nervous DBF with no driver’s license = extreme unhappiness. Greyhound it is!

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