In the City of Brotherly Love

A couple weekends ago, the girlfriend (who will henceforth be referred to as "K" and is responsible for all but one of these pictures), Maia, and I set out across the breadth of Pennsylvania to take in the sights of Philadelphia. The motivation was to see the King Tut exhibit that was in town on its last North American tour stop. We hung around for another day to take in some historical goodies and then detoured via Gettysburg on the way home. It was a loverly (birthday) trip - thanks, honey!

We motored our way into Philly (the directions from K's house were, literally, "turn right onto the Interstate, drive for 5 hours, turn left into hotel") on Saturday and pulled into town about sixish that evening. We stayed at the Sofitel hotel near Rittenhouse Square downtown. They got our business because they were pet friendly - nee, pet enthusiastic, as it turned out - and turned out to be well situated, within walking distance of our main attractions. Rittenhouse Square is a nice park that provided a good place for Maia to get walked, even fairly late at night. In addition, one of the restaurants circling the Square seemed to be the primo spot for car watching - one night walking Maia we spied a Ferrari 355 spyder, a 360 spyder, 2 Acura NSXs, and an Aston Martin DB9! I was more enthused than K, of course. Plus, the Sofitel's bed was uber comfy, as Maia demonstrates. We dined at a nifty Italian place in the neighborhood that featured goodies from a coal-fired oven.

On Sunday, we set out for the Franklin Institute, home of the aforesaid King Tut exhibit. Along the way, we stumbled into the Philadelphia Book Fair taking place at the Free Library next door to the Institute. OK, "stumbled," isn't quite right - K is a book fiend and we'd seen signs on our way into town, so we would have found it one way or another. Unfortunately, it was kind of a disappointment. Although I recognized a few of the authors listed on the schedule, most of the booths consisted of small publishers with authors you've never heard of hawking books you'd never want to read. And there were Stormtroopers. Dancing Stormtroopers. That's so wrong, I don't even know where to start!

The Institute, located in the city's museum district, is mostly a hands-on science museum, much like COSI in Columbus. We figure it would be easy to kill a few hours inside until our tickets for the Tut exhibit were valid. On the way over, we grabbed a soft pretzel. Munching on our pretzel while standing on the steps of the Institute, we noticed a group of folks start to gather on the sidewalk carrying signs. Then they started chanting - "King Tut is back and he's stiiilll black" - over and over. They got moved down the sidewalk a little bit by The Man, which I didn't think was necessary. They weren't really blocking the way, weren't all that loud, and they're chant had a good beat. In fact, K tried to catch some video on her cell phone in hopes that I could rip it into a .wav file and loop it later. No such luck, however. We couldn't quite get why they were protesting, however. Tut was African, of course - has anybody ever claimed he wasn't black? It's not like he's had Jesus's PR guy to turn him into a blue-eyed blond-haired Caucasian.

Once inside, we were confronted with the large statue of Franklin you can see above. It's actually the National Ben Franklin Memorial, which is odd given that it's nowhere near where he's buried (more on that later). As expected, the Institute had lots of hands-on goodies, including a walk-through heart and (as you can see) a vintage jet fighter plane.


But the main attraction was Tut and he didn't disappoint. With audio tour guidance from Omar Sharif, we viewed a sampling of really interesting artifacts from both Tut's tomb and those of his recent ancestors. I, for one, had no idea of Tut's role in scaling back religious reforms of his predecessor and restoring the old gods to prominence. Not bad for a 19-year old. Of particular interest to me, in terms of tomb artifacts, were the various shabti placed in the tombs. They were humanoid figures that would do manual labor for the entombed when called upon by the gods. In other words - lackeys. But I found it mildly progressive that the Egyptians would produce artworks for that purpose, rather than freeze drying the Pharaoh's actual servants. Sadly, the exhibit did not contain Tut's famous sarcophagus, but did wind up with several items that were on the body when found by Howard Carter.


On the way home, we passed by the the Academy of Natural Sciences, which had this cool dinosaur statute out front. They also had a banner for an exhibit that almost made us stay an extra day. I think it speaks for itself:


That evening, we dined at a Cuban restaurant in the neighborhood that, in addition to having really good food (K, particularly, had a pork dish that was awesome) had a great ambiance. Replacing the usual paintings or what not on the walls were projected photos from pre-Castro Cuba.

On Monday, the plan was to head in the opposite direction towards the historical part of town. Before we did, however, we had to feast on Philly's greatest delicacy - cheese steaks!


Mom's cart, however, is not where we partook of that particular gastronomic delight. There was a place around back of the hotel called Tony, Jr.'s that pimped their sandwiches. K went for the traditionally Philly setup (steak and Cheese Whiz), while I went for a pizza-flavored offering (steak, Provolone, & sauce). Both were yummy, and we figured that between the sandwiches and the soft pretzel yesterday we had suitably engaged the local fooderies.

The old city in Philly means one thing - Independence Hall. Unfortunately for us, Independence Hall also means a need for tickets, which were gone for the day well before we even considered getting out of bed. Still, it looks cool, don't it? In fact, as we would find out, the historical area is overwhelmed with school kids pretty much every day, even Mondays, so we didn't stand much of a chance of getting in in the first place. That's Mr. Barry, founder of the US Navy, out front, pointing towards the naval yard.


One place we did get into, for free no less, was the fairly new building housing the Liberty Bell. When I went to Philly as a kid, the Bell was housed in a dull glass pavilion. But the new digs provide more space for info about the bell's background (read the Wiki article - it's quite interesting). Of course, the Bell itself is the star of the show. Even if it looks fairly puny next to yours truly!


After the Bell, we were on our way to the main Visitor's Center when we were shanghaied by a persistent horse-drawn carriage tour operator. We relented (and she waited until we got a drink!) and took a leisurely 40-minute trip through the old town. Along the way we learned about several cool places that we might have missed otherwise. One of them was the Physick House, pictured here. Colonial Philly happened to be home to two American medical pioneers. One was Dr. Benjamin Rush, the father of modern psychiatry. The other was Dr. Philip Physick, the father of modern surgery. The glass over the door to Physick's house is Colonial-period original. A later owner had boarded the window up to block out sunlight (she allegedly didn't like to dust and thus wanted to keep sunbeams to a minimum). When restorationists took the boards down in the 1970s, the original glass was preserved intact.


Also on the tour was Philly's federal courthouse - the Byrne Federal Courthouse - living proof that I practice in the wrong Circuit.

On the tour we learned about a building on the edge of the historic district that had a huge stained glass installation in the lobby. Being that K is a bit of a stained glass groupie, we tracked down the building, the Curtis Publishing Company building. Curtis was the publisher of, among other things, The Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Home Journal, which he started to give his daughter a job. Curtis was a big wig in Philly for a long time and his name is everywhere (the Curtis Institute of Music, for instance). The stained glass piece, called "The Dream Garden" (not to be confused with the overstuffed Flower Kings epic "Garden of Dreams"), was based on a painting by Maxfield Parrish. It contains something along the lines of 200,000 separate pieces of stained glass. It is, even in its current undergoing renovation phase, a sight to behold. The picture doesn't really do it justice. It sort of reminded me of turning a corner in the Art Institute in Chicago and coming face to face with the wall-sized "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte."

As we gawked at the stained glass, a woman who was sitting in the lobby asked if we were from out of town (duh!) and told us to be sure to see the fountain on the other side of the stained glass. We trailed a tour group that moved through down the hall into a huge atrium in the main part of the building. Sure enough, the fountain in the atrium was equally impressive, several stories high with water cascading in stairstep fashion before disappearing underneath the fountain's edge (there was no terminal pool). K was so taken by the fountain that I got to take a rare photo of her perched on the edge. Meaning that photos of her are rare, not photos of her perched on the edge of lavish fountains, although those are fairly rare, too.

After the stop at the Curtis building, we headed off towards the fairly new Constitution Center. Along the way, we saw signs for Ben Franklin's grave, so we decided to detour that way. Franklin, along with several other notables of the colonial era (Drs. Rush and Physik, for two), is buried in the cemetery belonging to Christ Church, an Anglican church dating back to 1695. The church itself is a couple of blocks away, interestingly. The graveyard, only a few hundred square feet large (IMHO), contains over 4000 graves, many marked with simple headstones that have worn away or sunk into the earth over the eons. The one in this pictures is by far the most impressive, more so than ol' Ben's (too much sunlight means no pictures came out well - see the Wiki article). Surprise surprise - it belonged to a family of lawyers!

Our final stop of the day (the Mint was closed by the time we passed by, which is just as well, as I'm not sure we'd made it through security!) was the new National Constitution Center. It's dedicated to the US Constitution (obviously), although the actual document is still at the National Archives in DC. The Center is a nice idea, with a lot of very modern audio-visual installations and such. Unfortunately, there's so much AV stuff going on it's hard to hear yourself think at times. One of said AV installations is a Presidential lectern behind which you can stand and appear to give your inaugural address. There's a camera to take a picture of the event, which they'll sell you in the lobby, of course. K illicitly snapped this shot of Mitt Romney's worst nightmare - President JDB!


That was it for Philly. We trudged back to the hotel (via a splendid local chocolate shop), dined at another fine local eatery, and headed out of town the next day. On the way home we made a detour to Gettysburg and did the auto tour of the battlefield (after we actually found were it started!). I did the same thing at Antietam a few years ago on the way back from a DC business trip and it's a nice way to see the battlefield. You can get out at each critical point, survey the terrain, and ponder the goings on in relative peace and privacy. Plus, it got the dog a nice workout (she was really exhausted by the end of the day!). Here Maia and I pose in front of a cannon marking part of the Union lines on the second and third days of the battle. Behind the cannon and off to the right, just slightly, was the high water mark of Pickett's Charge on the third day of the battle.


Given the scope of the battle (more than 140,000 men took part), Gettysburg is home to scores of monuments for the various regiments that fought there. This one belongs (I think) to the 90th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry and is situated along the Union lines on the north of town during the battle's first day. It's unique among the monuments because of the tree trunk shape (no, Maia didn't piddle on it). Sadly, we learned later, it's a favorite target for vandals.


In addition to the individual unit monuments, several (if not all) of the states represented at the battle have their own monuments. Even West Virginia, which was only a couple of weeks old at the time, is represented. Across the road from the cannon pictured above is the Pennsylvania monument. To say it's the largest of the monuments is to say Andre the Giant was the largest of wrestlers - it's an understatement. But, consider that 35,000 Pennsylvanians fought there and, combined with it being the only major engagement in the state, it makes perfect sense. The two figures on the front are, IIRC, Lincoln and the Union commander Meade, who was from PA. That's winged victory on the top.


And that, as they say, is that. We wound home over the mountains from Gettysburg to finish off a great trip. The weather cooperated perfectly and the company, of course, was wonderful. Thanks again, honey!