City of Brotherly Love

Long time no see, and this time I have actual travel updates for you instead of just yarn!

Over Memorial Day weekend Wil and I visited Philadelphia for the wedding of a grad school friend (congrats, Mary!!). My insane desire to read every sign was thwarted by the limited amount of time we had in Philly, but it was still pretty awesome.

We arrived on Friday and wandered around the neighborhood until we found a local who pointed us to a Yemeni restaurant...it was an amazing choice. The food was incredible, and we got enough bread to make breakfast all weekend (along with a little meat, cheese, and jam from the grocery)!

Our apartment was in this neighborhood, which is super old and super adorable. The building we stayed in was built in the 1850s.

Counterclockwise from top: shakshuka, some kind of lamb stew served "volcano style", and so.much.bread.

On Saturday my phone clocked us at about 10 miles of walking, though I'd say it's more - we did a lot of slow museum wandering that day. We started out by taking a tram into the city from our apartment, and got off early to visit City Hall. There's a neat outdoor exhibit over the subway entrances about the design of Philadelphia and how City Hall came to be! We also saw the Philadelphia Masonic Temple next door.

Philadelphia City Hall!

The city's design was revolutionary for its time because of its commitment to public space and buildings (which also reduced the risk of a city-wide fire), and its provisions for expansion.

George Washington showing his masonic apron to Benjamin Franklin; the apron was a gift from Thomas Jefferson.

After that we walked to Independence National Historical Park, where we learned it's virtually impossible to get Independence Hall tickets unless you line up really early, so we just saw what we could.

National Constitution Center (a museum)

The President's House was the first presidential mansion; George Washington and John Adams both lived here. It's now the site of an open-air museum showing the foundations of the house and the history of enslaved Africans who worked there.

Independence Hall! We saw the front and back of this guy, but very few buildings were actually open and accessible for some reason.

Second Bank of the United States, constructed in the 1820s. After President Jackson prevented the rechartering of the bank in the 1830s, this became the Philadelphia Custom House.

Carpenters' Hall, completed in 1774, served as the meeting place of the Carpenters Company, who were basically a carpenters' guild or union. They built many of the preserved buildings in the National Historical Park. The First Continental Congress met here in 1774 to air their grievances and choose a course of action.

Interior of Carpenters' Hall with a model of the Hall under construction.

First Bank of the United States, built in 1795 after Alexander Hamilton conceived of the bank to handle Revolutionary War debt.

Benjamin Franklin's home sat in this courtyard. Only the foundations remain, but these steel frames help people imagine the former structure. This whole courtyard and adjacent building make up the Benjamin Franklin Museum, which I highly recommend. Ben was amazing!!

Then we had some lunch at the City Tavern, built in 1773 (and reconstructed in 1975) and the largest hotel in the colonies. The food all comes from the Founding Fathers' times, and employees are dressed in period clothing! I definitely did not spill gravy on my white shirt at this beautiful historical place.

City Tavern! It opened in 1773. In 1774 the Continental Congress met here, and in 1777 Congress held the first 4th of July celebration here. Later it hosted parties honoring George Washington and became the "unofficial White House of the new capital." In 1854 it was torn down, but the NPS reconstructed it starting in 1975.

One of the locations I really wanted to see was Elfreth's Alley, the oldest continuously inhabited residential street in America. All the houses here were built between 1720 and 1830, and the people who live here seem to keep their street-facing drapes closed, understandably. You can tour inside one of the homes-turned-museum, but it cost $20/person so we contented ourselves with obsessing at how dang cute these houses were (very) and guessing how much they cost (a lot).

We spent most of the afternoon at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the park where it's located. It's a great experience, and I totally recommend it if you're in Philly. After this we walked back to our apartment and met an old friend, Greg, for dinner.

Rocky!

View of the Museum from the sculpture gardens.

Art! They had an Impressionists special exhibit. This is La Pointe de la Galere by Henri Cross; the shifting colors in the sky made me think of a neat knitting pattern. We even got to see Monet's Water Lilies and Van Gogh's Sunflowers!

...modern art.

The Rodin sculpture museum, a bit of a walk down the parkway from the Museum.

Rodin's The Thinker

Following a number of epidemics thought to be caused by a lack of clean water, the city created water works to pump water into Philadelphia. The first solution was not ideal, but the second was a marvelous feat of engineering. The Fairmount Water Works (partly pictured here) were constructed between 1812 and 1815. The art museum actually sits on what used to be an earthen reservoir. A few years later a dam was built, and a few years after that they switched to water wheels, and then to turbines. It closed in 1909 when more advanced water works opened, and is now a tourist attraction.

A number of gazebos were constructed from which people could view the impressive waterworks.

Looking from the water works onto the Schuylkill River and the Fairmount Dam.

Sunday morning Greg and I went to church at St. Francis de Sales in West Philadelphia (yep, we stayed in West Philadelphia!!). The cornerstone for this church was laid in 1907 and construction completed in 1911. It's a really beautiful church; it's mostly one big dome, with corner towers and a grand entrance area.

We had time for one more museum visit, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, before we had to shower and go to the wedding. The Penn Museum looks to be updating - there were a mix of old and new exhibits, and the new ones had a lot of digital assistance.  Two thumbs up!

Mary's wedding was wonderful. It was so nice to see my grad school friends again, catch up, eat good food, and dance. A quick thunderstorm was apt, considering the crowd were one-third meteorologists!

We discovered that this camera had a fixed focal length. Great for selfies, not so great for across-the-table pictures!

On Monday morning we thought we could see the Reading Terminal Market, but it was closed for Memorial Day. Instead we wandered around Chinatown, drank bubble tea, and ate some good food. Then, sadly, it was time to head back to Milwaukee. I wish we had more time to travel, as always, but we had a great time!