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!
Port Authority was reasonably sane Saturday morning—I assume the big rush to get out of the city was Friday evening. We go there early so we could get in line early: we ended up hopping on an early bus that departed a few minutes after we sat down. After a two-plus hour bus ride, we picked up a city map and guide book from the mall next to the bus depot, and had ourselves a quickie lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant, where we consumed pork in at least three different forms. DBF had Vietnamese coffee for the first time. He loved it so much he downed a second coffee before I was halfway through my first. Our waiter thought this was funny. Afterwards, we trudged to the Septa station in the middle of a downpour, and hopped the train to our hotel, the Sofitel near Rittenhouse Square.
The desk staff nicely let us into our room an hour before check-in time—wisely so, as they would have two grumpy, wet travelers, including one coming down from a caffeine binge, with a dripping suitcase staring them down in the lobby if they hadn’t. The room was lovely–the fluffy down comforter and featherbed made it impossible to not take a running start and belly-flop right onto it. We napped for two hours before heading out to White Dog Cafe in University City for dinner. The Beard Foundation honored Judy Wicks, the owner of White Dog, at the 2005 awards: she’s like an East Coast version of Alice Waters. I had a delicious heirloom tomato panzanella for my app; pan-seared bluefish with small-brick-shaped chickpea sides that were ever so good and fluffy for my entree; and a fresh peach cobbler for dessert. I loved the app the most: the tomatoes were perfectly ripe, and reminded me of the tomatoes from home. Red, juicy, and sweet. The croutons were nicely crunchy and lightly oiled. The pecorino was a bit wimpy though: it could have used a bit more saltiness to offset the tang of the vinaigrette. I learned that I don’t care for bluefish—the flesh was soft and bit mushy, and had a fishiness that seemed at odds with the rest of the dish. The succotash side was a bit overdressed and a bit too much to take, even in small amounts. But the little chickpea bricks were nice. The peach cobbler was good and simple. DBF declared his crabcakes the best he’s ever had, and commented on its fluffiness throughout the evening. He was less enthralled with his entree, the kitchen’s take on a Peking duck breast, but he did love the spoonbread that accompanied it. His brownie sundae was drowned in whipped cream.
Brunch at the Continental Midtown was silly, but fun. The servers are dressed like retro bowling alley staff, and the upstairs has basket seats suspended from the ceiling and animal-shaped chairs in the lounge. We headed to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I found before leaving that never having seen any of the Rocky movies was to my detriment, as the museum’s foundation in pop culture was established in a particular scene of that movie. Again: oh well. I’m not sitting through a Sylvester Stallone movie about boxing to know what everyone’s talking about.
Hands-down the most bizarre thing we saw at the museum: Disturbing on so many levels.
We took in three hours of the museum. I enjoyed the Asian art the most: they have some usual stuff in there, like a Ming dynasty reception room. My complaint is that it’s so dark in there, you can barely see the details. The pictures actually had more light in them than the room actually had.
Another room nearby was in Indian temple hall from the mid-1500s—also so dark that it was impossible to really take a good look.
And this Matisse. I’m usually not a fan of his, but this, I liked.
We stopped in the Rodin Museum very briefly, which ostensibly houses the largest Rodin collection outside of Europe. I found this sort of hard to believe: I feel like I’ve seen more at Lacma and the Brooklyn Museum. But I digress. Again, nice little collection, but my experience was marred by two tourists who were touching the giant hand sculputres just to be cute for their pictures. I wanted to tackle them. I hate it when I see people touching the art. They’re not even touching it to enjoy it. They’re just touching it for pictures, or to rest their hand on something. Augh!
We hopped on the handy Phlash trolley to Old City, where one look at the long line just to see the Liberty Bell up close convinced us it was just as effective to see it from the sidewalk. We walked through Old City and down into Society Hill, then down to Second Street. After much wandering and indecision, we ended up eating dinner at Audrey Claire. My gorgonzola and pear flatbread app was wonderful; DBF got a tomato and mozz salad that he found serviceable. I ordered 2 more apps instead of an entree: an arugula salad with lentils and red onion dressed with a honey and olive oil dressing (maybe with a bit of champange or white wine vinegar?) with goat cheese crostini, and goat cheese and leek tartlets on polenta crusts. The former was a revelation: I’ve already attempted a version of the dressing. The latter wasn’t anything special.
Monday morning we walked across Rittenhouse Square and down a few blocks to Ants Pants Cafe for brunch, then up 22nd Street to the Mütter Museum, which is known for its collection of gross-out items such as babies in jars, a large collection of human skulls, and casts of siamese twins. The upstairs is the more tame part of the exhibit that touches on the history of medicine, and the wacky things people did to cure their ills way back when, like blood-letting. Apparently Ben Franklin, while not a doctor, wrote so often on medical issues and was friends with so many doctors that he was practically considered a doctor, so much so that he was awarded honorary MD degrees, and was given to self-diagnose and treat his bladder stones. He was also an avid swimmer!
Possibly most exciting was a picture of one of Buddy‘s ancestors, right on the museum wall. I could feel Buddy wriggle with glee…
Also on the second floor is a display on conjoined twins, which solely needs updating, as their most recent case was from the mid-90s. There was no mention of these kids, or certainly not these, and didn’t really delve into the ethical discussion—or that such a discussion exists–about separating the twins. The downstairs portion contained the babies in jars–a section that discussed birth defects displayed several, including babies with spina bifida, babies without brains, one without a head, and other horrifying things that filled DBF with glee, but made me queasy.
After the museum, we walked down to antiques row on Pine Street, down to Christian and 9th to eat lunch at Sabrina’s (but they were closing early), so we walked through the Italian market, even though everything was closed, then back up through Society Hill and Old City to Cuba Libre for an early dinner. We hopped the train back to the hotel to pick up our bag, which they nicely held for us after we checked out, and headed to the bus station, where we caught an early trip back to NYC.
Philly’s great. I’m ready to go back with a car and check out all the outlying areas like Chestnut Hill (I hear there’s tearooms there!) that I didn’t see this time around. For a more succinct, abbreviated version of the highlights of this trip, click here.
