Only ten days after we flew home from Orlando, Ellie and I took off on another trip. This one was more business than pleasure. She’s entering her senior year, and we were looking at colleges. Three colleges in three major cities in three days. COVID delayed the start of college visits by about a year, so we had to jam a whole bunch together. She had one week over the summer when she wasn’t nannying or in Orlando, so we took advantage of that week.
Our first stop was Philadelphia. We had a 5:55 am flight out of IND, so I set my alarm for 4 am and scheduled an Uber for 4:20. My mind had other ideas. I woke up at 2:30 and tried for a really long time to get back to sleep. I finally got out of bed at 3:20 and just decided to get ready. Ellie woke at 4 to her alarm, and we were climbing into the Lyft at 4:20.
It was not the nicest Lyft I’ve ever taken. The car was tiny. It was so small that I couldn’t even sit behind the driver, and Ellie was scrunched up, despite her lack of height. It was also loud and jerky, and I found myself calculating whether we’d make it to our flight on time if it broke down on the side of the interstate. Fortunately, that scenario stayed hypothetical, and we arrived at the airport right at 5:00. We weren’t checking bags, and we zipped through TSA Pre-Check, so we had plenty of time to stop at the new Tinker Coffee (yum!) on the way to our gate.
Our plane was at the gate when we arrived, which is always a good sign! I had forgotten to check in at 5:55 the previous morning, but I checked in during early afternoon, and we managed to get boarding positions B19 and B20 (on Southwest) anyway. We easily found seats together and were on our way . . . back to Orlando. The best flight I could find to Philadelphia had a layover in Orlando, so we were on the plane with a bunch of families headed to Disney. I paid for internet so I could work on the plane and got a lot done while Ellie, leaning against my arm, napped.
Our layover went smoothly. Ellie wanted to walk around a bit, and when we found an empty gate she decided to do yoga. While she did, I looked up at one of the airport displays, and it referred to airport yoga!
After the yoga we went to our gate to wait. Our next flight was nearly on time. We found seats together again and were soon in Philadelphia! It took us a bit to find the ride share area, but our driver, Frederick, arrived quickly after we requested the car. Frederick was great and got us to the hotel soon and safely. On the way he asked if we were in town to see the President. We had no idea President Biden was going to be in Philly that day, but we jokingly told Frederick we’d say hi to the President for him.
I had booked at the Philadelphia Marriott Old Town which, as the name implies, was in the old part of the city. It was also obviously an old hotel. The style just screamed I was built in the 1970s! Still, the staff was friendly, the room was updated, and it was close to all kinds of cool historical places.
Before we did any sightseeing we needed lunch. I found a place a couple blocks away called Khyber Pass Pub that looked pretty good, so we set off on foot for the restaurant. It had outdoor seating, literally a part of the street that had been blocked off and was covered to shade from the sun. We found a seat and had a nice meal. The building the restaurant was in was old. Really old. It had obviously been a one-story tiny little thing until at some point someone built around it and on top of it. And while we were there a beer delivery came, and they opened an old door in the sidewalk that led down to a cool cellar. That lunch basically set the tone for the fact that we were in one of the older cities in America.
I had not had time to do any research before our trip, so while we were at lunch I literally pulled up a map and searched for landmarks. I discovered that we were about a block from one end of Independence National Historic Park, so we aimed for that. The first thing we saw was the site of one of Alexander Hamilton’s houses. The house wasn’t there anymore, so it was significantly less interesting than we’d hoped. There was just a plaque noting the spot. We actually didn’t spend a lot of time looking at the buildings in the national park because it was about a million degrees that day. We did, however, see Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. The Liberty Bell was a special treat because it was indoors and nicely air conditioned.
As we walked, we passed a Wawa that was not a gas station. It was a standalone convenience store in a downtown building. It was really nice, and since it was also air conditioned, we spent a fair amount of time just looking around it. Just across the street from the Wawa was a hop on/hop off bus place. We considered doing the bus, but we had already seen most of the places that we wanted to see and didn’t really want to spend the rest of the afternoon on a bus. Instead, we decided to walk to Love Park and see Robert Indiana’s Love sculpture.
First, we passed by the park’s visitor center and stopped in to check out the gift store. I was looking for something to take back to Madeline. We saw some gift possibilities but ended up not buying. We did see a display of jewelry by Stacey Lee Weber, the daughter of my former colleague. Stacey is an artist in Philadelphia, and she makes cool jewelry and sculptures and wall hangings out of coins. When my girls were younger and I would take them to the office with me, they’d call my colleague “Uncle Doug,” so when I saw the display I exclaimed, “That’s Uncle Doug’s daughter!” I think I embarrassed Ellie a bit. Of course I had to take a picture and text it to Doug.
Serendipitously, on the way to Love Park we took a couple wrong turns that unintentionally took us past (1) the site where President Biden was speaking, along a sidewalk filled with supporters and protestors and reporters and activists and politicians; and (2) Benjamin Franklin’s grave. I would have expected Ben Franklin’s gravestone to be some pompously adorned thing, in the middle of the graveyard, maybe on a hill. Instead, it was a flat stone, super simple, so close to the sidewalk I could have reached through the fence and touched it.
The walk to Love Park was long. We knew by looking at the map that it was about a mile. What we didn’t know was that the first part of the walk was through a not very nice area, and then we would hit Chinatown which was interesting, but that the smell of the sewer would permeate our path. The entire walk was scorchingly hot. 84 degrees with a feels-like temperature of 97! That is some killer humidity.
We finally made it to Love Park and were completely underwhelmed. I thought the Love sculpture in Philly was the original, and the one in Indianapolis at Newfields (formerly Indianapolis Museum of Art) was a later/lesser work. I was totally wrong. The Love sculpture in Indianapolis is the original sculpture, based on Robert Indiana’s earlier painting. And there are dozens of Love sculptures around the world, including three in Philadelphia. I think I may make it a personal quest to see every version of the sculpture when I’m in a city that has one.
On the way to Love Park we had noticed that we were passing right by Reading Terminal Market, which Uncle Doug’s daughter had recommended we visit. We turned around at Love Park and went back to Reading Terminal Market. We walked around, and the place looked really interesting, but I was so hot and tired that the smell of raw meat and fish was making me nauseous. We did stop for some Bassetts Ice Cream before we left. Bassets has been around since 1861 and in Reading Terminal Market since 1892! The ice cream was good, but I still prefer Graeters and BRICS.
After the ice cream Ellie was not in the mood to walk back to the hotel, and I was not in the mood to convince her. We called a Lyft, which was a real white-knuckle experience, but we somehow got to the hotel safely. Even though it was probably five o’clock at that point, I needed a nap and took one while Ellie relaxed. When I woke up we had a FaceTime call with Andy & Madeline, ordered ramen from a local restaurant via Uber Eats, and ate in the room while watching Forrest Gump. I had no trouble sleeping as soon as the movie was over. My first trip to Philadelphia was great but exhausting, and we had a college to visit the next day.