After a long winter, we have begun our weekend city trips. First one this year is a previous US capital - Philadelphia, PA. Again we went by bus, Greyhound this time, and took about 7-8 hours with stops in the middle. (We find that the quality of Megabus or Greyhound are about the same, so we just go with the better option: money-wise and time-wise.)
Not that the street lights were going crazy, just because this HDR photo was made from several still photos.
After a long morning bus trip, we headed straight to the Reading Terminal Market, which is like 10 steps from the bus station. Apparently, Saturday afternoon is the worst time to visit RTM because of the crowd, but... \(╯-╰)/ Anyhoo, a market without people would be boring, right? I love to visit local markets cause I think it's the place to truly percept the local atmosphere and the best place to people-watch (haha!). We covered a fair amount of vendors in the market until we decided to have our lunch at the Dutch Eating Place which is served by the Pennsylvanian Dutch (Amish community). Bob had a burger and I had blueberry pancakes with turkey bacon. Both were tasty but, as expected, the servings were huge which gave us enough energy for our afternoon walk. I really liked the market. I think if we ever lived in Philly, it will probably be my must-go place every week or so. How come we don't have such market in Pittsburgh?!
Mascot of the market - Philbert the pig.
Our walk after lunch was Masonic Temple-City Hall-Logan Square-Benjamin Franklin Parkway-Rodin Museum-Philadelphia Museum of Art/Rocky steps-Schuylkill River trail (towards south)-cross the river on Market street-University Area.
The LOVE sculpture at the Love park next to the City Hall. There's another one in the campus of UPenn.
There were two festivals happening on our walk: Sister Cities Park International Festival and Science Carnival. The first one is a culture and food festival from the sister cities of Philly across the globe. We didn't have space to taste food, but we had some time to enjoy performances (separately) from a French singer and Japanese Taiko drummers. Bob said the songs were old French songs but the singer well-covered them in her own way. Surprisingly, there were more Western drummers and maybe just one or two Japanese ones in the show. I know they are amateurs, but I could tell that the Japanese drummers presented better choreography from small details like the hands and arms. But still, it was a wonderful show to enjoy in a sunny afternoon.
The Science Carnival aimed to present science to the community especially young children. There were stands from local universities and science institutes using simple everyday experience or hand-on experiments to teach about science and engineering. For example, extracting DNA from strawberries, explaining how rockets work, making lip gloss from chemical compounds...etc. There were also many stands about environmental protection and energy saving. I find it was really a cool carnival!
We visited the Rodin Museum by accident and we were glad that we did it. We were just about to enter the garden when a couple gave me two stickers to visit the museum for free. (There's no fixed admission but they would strongly suggest you to donate before allowing you to visit.) The most famous sculpture from Rodin is undoubtedly The Thinker, which originated from the upper-center piece on The Gates of Hell. The museum's collection is quite large, from small pieces to full size ones displayed not only inside the museum but also around in the garden.
Remember the famous boxer Rocky, played by Sylvester Stallone? The movie was set in Philly, so they made a sculpture of him near the steps of Philadelphia Museum of Art. The steps were part of his morning running route. After we came back to Pittsburgh, we watched the movie again to see if we could recognize the scenes where the movie was taken.
Rocky the World Heavyweight Championship!
The University Area is mainly the University of Pennsylvania with a small part for Drexel University. There weren't a lot of students in campus cause I guess most of them were done with finals and have gone home or travel. The ones we see were probably the poor ones that needed to stick around for research, a.k.a. PHD students. :P The university buildings are mostly Gothic style common in UK (like Oxford and Cambridge). It felt really un-American when walking around in the campus.
After waking up very early in the morning and walking around for half a day, we were very tired and glad to arrive at our hosts' place to enjoy a nice home dinner and a couple of drinks at a nearby bar. That night, we fell asleep in a minute!
Sunday's route was University Area-Walnut street-Elfreth's Alley-Liberty Bell/Independence Hall-Bus station back to Pittsburgh.
As you can tell from our route, we had a lazy Sunday. While heading back to town, we came across a 10-mile jogging event, so it was nice to walk part of the city with no cars around. Elfreth's Alley is a little cobblestone alley with little cute houses in European style. It claims to be the oldest residential street in the US. We were surprised that some houses are occupied cause we thought the whole alley was a museum! We'd love to live in these houses if we ever had a chance to live in Philly.
A main attraction that people visit in Philly is the Independence National Historic Park which includes the Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, Benjamin Franklin Memorial and others. It was unfortunately raining a bit when we were visiting that area, so we ended up only visiting the Liberty Bell and saw the Independence Hall from outside before we went for lunch. This was the place where the declaration of independence and US constitution were made. After visiting the Liberty Bell, we learned that it was not only used as a symbol for independence but also for women's right and freedom and it had traveled around the US during late 19th and early 20th century. Perhaps the only epic fail was that it has a long crack from the beginning (Bob: of course! cause it's made in UK! ha!).
We went for lunch at a popular Chinese restaurant in China town - Dim Sum Garden. We went there mainly for their juicy Shanghai soup dumplings (see photo below). We ordered two baskets of dumplings and sweet-and-sour spare ribs (finished them too fast) and sweet red beans cake as dessert. Our table was next to their working area, so we could see them make soup dumplings right in front of us (not suggested if you're very hungry like us, just makes you feel the wait is longer). The resto was quite crowded so we had to wait some time before it was finally our turn to get the dumplings. But it was really tasty so worth the wait! How come we don't have this in Pittsburgh?
Our trip ended with a good lunch and a final visit to the market again! :P
