philadelphia
i was in philadelphia this weekend! most of the time i was eating or sleeping or walking around, but i spent a little more than four hours running also.
before the trip i was pretty worried that it was going to suck; that for some series of reasons i might end up spending all my non-marathon time in the hotel room getting work done and regretting going to a strange uncomfortable city to do something i could also do in pittsburgh. but then i was talking about it with my dad, and he said don't miss the reading terminal market, and instantly i found a more adventurous attitude. (the rest of the trip went uphill from there, and proved itself more than worthy of the hundreds of dollars i spent on it.)
reading terminal market is wonderful. it is like the whole strip district, only indoors, and in one building. it is so big they have to sort the stalls on a grid of lettered streets and numbered avenues, which i didn't figure out until i had already gotten thoroughly lost twice.
getting lost is a rare pleasure for me - usually my sense of direction and distance is too good, but when it isn't, i need some way to know i won't get screwed (i.e., to know how the roads outside of the building are laid out, and that i could just find any exit) before i stop being too careful for it to be any fun.
i bought some various chocolate products, and had lunch at the first of three crêperies of the trip. philadelphia seems to have a crêpe fixation. actually, contrary to my plan, going to RTM was not the first thing upon getting to town. on the way over i stumbled by (in a different way than i stumbled by many parts of town today, post-marathon) the occupy philadelphia encampment.
i didn't learn anything new in terms of politics while there, but i did appreciate the structure of the protest. for all its ad-hoc "people set up tents and throw their belongings around however they feel like" nature, it did come off as well-organised; in particular, i was impressed by the central 'information' tent with its "day 44" schedule of events (especially the morning yoga(!)).
then i spent the rest of the afternoon in the museum of art, of which i have a bunch of pictures with which i won't crowd this post,
... save to say that the purported "great stair hall" was disappointingly less stairful than the entrance stairs outside. but the museum was pretty impressive anyway.
then i met up with chrisamaphone and aleffert and akiva's friend other-chris and (later) roseandsigil and we proceeded to engage in some olympic-tier eating and napping. on day two there was a seriously blow-me-away meal at this tapas place, and on day three - establishing for me a grand two-time tradition of having an extremely swanky meal the evening after running a marathon - morimoto's, for which i made an exception to my vegetarian project. i have had better food for that price, but the compositions and presentations were worth it. i did not take any pictures (it tends to inhibit my enjoyment...), but morimoto's is definitely a post-futuristic spaceship, with a light show control room / bridge, in disguise.
so, also, philly has some pretty impressive architecture.
i'm not sure if it was just the excitement of learning a new place (versus the "complacent boredom-pessimism" i sometimes have for pittsburgh), or perhaps that i spent nearly all my time in downtown, but i was pretty enthralled by the city basically the whole time i was there. (i felt the same way about the food scene.)
finally, earlier today with another half-afternoon before leaving, i discovered an adorable hole-in-the-wall kosher middle-eastern restaurant, which gave me the best $6 falafel sandwich ever, and also (to continue another noble tradition of mine) a gelato store (that is also a coffeeshop) that had such ben-is-a-complete-sucker-for flavours as orange cardamom, apple mascarpone, sea salt, coconut milk (and other purported-but-absent options like grapefruit campari and mission fig).
now (well, earlier, now) i am on the megabus back home to pittsburgh; it is 5pm and pitch dark outside and with only the faint green overhead lights for illumination.
pretty eerie.
before the trip i was pretty worried that it was going to suck; that for some series of reasons i might end up spending all my non-marathon time in the hotel room getting work done and regretting going to a strange uncomfortable city to do something i could also do in pittsburgh. but then i was talking about it with my dad, and he said don't miss the reading terminal market, and instantly i found a more adventurous attitude. (the rest of the trip went uphill from there, and proved itself more than worthy of the hundreds of dollars i spent on it.)
reading terminal market is wonderful. it is like the whole strip district, only indoors, and in one building. it is so big they have to sort the stalls on a grid of lettered streets and numbered avenues, which i didn't figure out until i had already gotten thoroughly lost twice.
getting lost is a rare pleasure for me - usually my sense of direction and distance is too good, but when it isn't, i need some way to know i won't get screwed (i.e., to know how the roads outside of the building are laid out, and that i could just find any exit) before i stop being too careful for it to be any fun.
i bought some various chocolate products, and had lunch at the first of three crêperies of the trip. philadelphia seems to have a crêpe fixation. actually, contrary to my plan, going to RTM was not the first thing upon getting to town. on the way over i stumbled by (in a different way than i stumbled by many parts of town today, post-marathon) the occupy philadelphia encampment.
i didn't learn anything new in terms of politics while there, but i did appreciate the structure of the protest. for all its ad-hoc "people set up tents and throw their belongings around however they feel like" nature, it did come off as well-organised; in particular, i was impressed by the central 'information' tent with its "day 44" schedule of events (especially the morning yoga(!)).
then i spent the rest of the afternoon in the museum of art, of which i have a bunch of pictures with which i won't crowd this post,
... save to say that the purported "great stair hall" was disappointingly less stairful than the entrance stairs outside. but the museum was pretty impressive anyway.
then i met up with chrisamaphone and aleffert and akiva's friend other-chris and (later) roseandsigil and we proceeded to engage in some olympic-tier eating and napping. on day two there was a seriously blow-me-away meal at this tapas place, and on day three - establishing for me a grand two-time tradition of having an extremely swanky meal the evening after running a marathon - morimoto's, for which i made an exception to my vegetarian project. i have had better food for that price, but the compositions and presentations were worth it. i did not take any pictures (it tends to inhibit my enjoyment...), but morimoto's is definitely a post-futuristic spaceship, with a light show control room / bridge, in disguise.
so, also, philly has some pretty impressive architecture.
i'm not sure if it was just the excitement of learning a new place (versus the "complacent boredom-pessimism" i sometimes have for pittsburgh), or perhaps that i spent nearly all my time in downtown, but i was pretty enthralled by the city basically the whole time i was there. (i felt the same way about the food scene.)
finally, earlier today with another half-afternoon before leaving, i discovered an adorable hole-in-the-wall kosher middle-eastern restaurant, which gave me the best $6 falafel sandwich ever, and also (to continue another noble tradition of mine) a gelato store (that is also a coffeeshop) that had such ben-is-a-complete-sucker-for flavours as orange cardamom, apple mascarpone, sea salt, coconut milk (and other purported-but-absent options like grapefruit campari and mission fig).
now (well, earlier, now) i am on the megabus back home to pittsburgh; it is 5pm and pitch dark outside and with only the faint green overhead lights for illumination.
pretty eerie.