Philly
My brother, Jim, and his wife, Carol, sold their B&B this summer and bought a condo in Philadelphia. They moved in at the beginning of November and are finally getting settled in enough to have visitors. Even though they haven’t been living there that long, they’ve already checked out a whole bunch of neat things to do and places to go in the city. I grew up so close to Philly and even worked there one summer, but never really spent a lot of time there except to go to sporting events. So, it was fun to explore the city with them. I think Jim was pretty excited to have an opportunity to show off his new hometown. He had all these notes on places to go and stuff to see. One of the first on his list was the holiday light show at Macy’s, followed closely by the Dickens Christmas Village. Of course, when we were kids the light show was at Wanamaker’s and the village was at Gimbel’s, or Strawbridge’s or some place like that. Now that Macy’s has bought them all up, they’ve luckily kept alive some of the old Christmas traditions. Well, the light show was pretty hokey, and very low-tech, but it seemed pretty exciting when we saw it 35 years ago. The Dickens Village was actually still pretty good. From Macy’s we headed over to the Reading Terminal Market, an indoor food market with vendors selling meat, seafood, cheese, bread, and all kinds of good stuff. Carol had made some homemade pasta for dinner, so we picked up some seafood to go with it, and some cheese for hors d’ouevres. On the way in and out I had to check out all the great stuff in between. Food shopping is one of the few kinds of shopping I love to do.
Tuesday morning we made our way to the Italian Market in South Philly, made famous by the original Rocky movie. We didn’t take the most direct route, though, because we wanted to check out a bunch of murals. Over 20 years ago an art teacher started a program to get troubled kids involved in art by painting murals on the sides of buildings in the city. Thousands of kids have gone through the program and, as a result of the Mural Arts Program, Philadelphia now has over 2600 murals. You can hardly drive 5 blocks without seeing one. In the two days I was there we saw at least 20 of them, most of which were pretty amazing.
Unfortunately, Tuesdays in winter aren’t the best time to go to the Italian Market if you want to really get the local flavor, but we still managed to find some great cheese, cannolis and produce. We also had a great lunch at Ralph’s, the country’s oldest, family-owned Italian restaurant. They say Saturdays are crazy and you gotta elbow your way past the crowds if you want to buy anything. We were all too full from lunch to think about dinner, so we just ate the cannolis for desert instead. Our evening entertainment was much more refined. The Curtis Institute is a world renowned music school whose students are all given full scholarships. During the school year they give free recitals 3 nights a week. That night they were playing some classical music with all wind instruments. Luckily, my brother told me ahead of time that you don’t clap between movements (or is it pieces?) You wait ‘til they are completely done. Whistling didn’t seem to be appreciated either. It wasn’t Death Cab for Cutie, but it was a nice change of pace.
Over the years Philly had gotten quite a reputation for being a rough, dirty town, but it really seems to be changing for the better. It is growing like crazy with luxury condos going up everywhere, and on the cultural side it really seems to be improving. Jim and Carol live close to the main downtown district so they are within walking distance to all kinds of things. I wouldn’t mind going back for another visit. I was their guinea pig, their first chance to give a tour and work some of the kinks out. I’d like to go back again after they’ve had a chance to get to know even more of the city.