The fast approaching school year prompted me into action. The girls and I made a plan to go for a three day visit to Philadelphia. Leaving the animals under Johan’s care, we set off last Monday.

Our plan was to take a train from Lewistown, PA to Philadelphia. We would then take the transit to our hotel and spend the next 2 days sightseeing and taking in the place. I am happy to report that it was a super successful trip. We saw a lot of things and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

Johan and Kylo Ren the dog dropped us off at the Lewistown train station. Kylo ignored us as they drove off. We thought he may either be upset with us for leaving him, or afraid that we would pull him out of the precious car! Kylo is very sensitive about being left behind.

The train was late, but that was fine with us. I had a gut feeling that we would luck out on this trip. This is because we had had to postpone the trip last week due to weather. After the bad luck, I felt that we were due for some good luck. Guess what?! I was right!

The journey was uneventful. We mostly looked out of the windows, read or stared at our phones! We did visit the food car and ate some crappy train food. It was exciting!

Finally we rolled into the Market st station. We headed to the subway station. Instantly I felt clueless about how to figure out the map, payment and layout of the station. Luckily a good Samaritan came to our rescue. She directed us a bit and sent us to the information booth.

Subway payments were surprisingly easy. You can tap your credit card to pay and walk through the entry points. We quickly got ourselves oriented with the map and took our first ride! We were at the Independence hall in no time. Our GPS helped us locate our hotel in the Independence hall. We had booked Wyndham in the historic district.

Quick review: Wyndham was an adequate hotel that served our purpose of crashing and staring at the television after a tiring day. Breakfast was not free. There was a pool. We had intended to visit the pool but never found the time or energy. Breakfast costs quite a bit, so the next time I would definitely choose a hotel that includes free breakfasts. House keeping was minimal. We loved the central location. It was one of very few reasonably priced hotels.

After checking in and showers, we left quickly. We went to the City hall via Subway again. We were scheduled to take the Philly by night bus tour that evening at 8 pm. We decided to eat at a nearby South Indian restaurant named Amma’s.

Quick Review: Amma’s was a very authentic South Indian restaurant. We loved it. The chutneys were ok, but the rava dosa and sambhar were really good. Vada was ok. Give chicken 65 a miss! Mango lassi was ok. Priced high, Philly style!

After dinner, we walked to City hall. What a delightful surprise! The Philadelphia city hall is a stunning place. On one side is Dilworth park. You MUST visit Dilworth park. It is the pulse of the city. There are fountains for kids (and adults) to run in. There is a ping pong table. There’s seating area and a restaurant. You should also check the events calendar. We lucked out and got to listen to a live jazz performance. As I said, luck was on our side.

Once you enter the archway into the City hall courtyard, the expansive courtyard and surrounding towers were a total delight. We were impressed. There were also street music performers. Such a pleasant place.

We slowly made our way to the Philly by night tour. It is a 1.5 hr double decker bus tour. We loved it! We had heard complaints about the speed of the bus (it goes so fast that you can’t see anything) and the sound quality of the presenter’s equipment. It does go fast, because they try to cover a lot. But you don’t have to see everything in 1.5 hours! You can enjoy the vibes of the city and listen to a super impressive narration by the presenter who talks about the history of the buildings rushing by. This is no ordinary performance and I was floored by the depth of the lady’s knowledge and energy. I would recommend this, especially because it is a good way to rest tired feet and see something at the same time.

The tour ended at 9:30 pm. We took our Subway back and retired for the night.

We woke up bright and early on Tuesday the 14th. After showers we left to find a restaurant within walking distance. The historic district is a hub of shopping and food, so we had no problem finding a nice restaurant with outdoor seating. As we ate, we planned our day.

We started walking toward Elfreth Alley, which has very old houses cramped in a small alley. Nice, old feel. Before we reached the alley, we ended up at Penn’s landing. We decided to walk up to the Delaware river via the bridge and take a look. It was a nice walk. However, Penn’s landing area is under construction. There wasn’t much to see. Don’t bother visiting the area for any purpose other than a walk over the bridge.

Next we went to Elfreth Alley. It was a cute alley. Touristy and fun. We spent a bit of time walking back and forth and checking it out. It doesn’t take more than 15 minutes. You could try it. It’s close to the subway station.

We next took the subway (blue line followed by orange line) to get to the magic gardens. Magic gardens was created by artist Isaiah Zeger from about 1994 – 2008. It is a delightful mix of tiles, bottles and odds and ends to create an artistic maze that you can walk through. It is very beautiful, but small and a bit expensive for the size of the property. If you haven’t seen the East Jesus art gallery in Slab City, CA, the magic gardens will likely not disappoint. East Jesus art gallery is better though, by many magnitudes.

On our way back, we saw this terrarium shop close to the magic gardens. It was breathtaking and inspired Tanya and Leena to make their own terrariums. That was a big positive of our visit to that part of the town.

On our way back we took the orange line followed by the green trolley to have lunch at Cafe Almaz. This is an Ethiopian restaurant in Philadelphia. The food was good. I have had better Ethiopian food in DC, but this was pretty good too.

We were very interested in trying out the buses which formed a better network than the subway. Using google maps, we could easily find the correct bus routes, stops and time of arrival of the next bus. We took the bus back to the hotel.

After a brief stop at the hotel, we walked down to the museum of illusions which happened to be a block away from our hotel(!). Our hotel location was a big boon.

The museum of illusions was an unbelievable delight. We were taken by all the optical illusions and puzzles they had. If you like optical illusions and puzzles, do not miss it. The museum is small, so two hours is the maximum time you will spend on it. That is, unless you are crazy enough to try to crack their puzzles. In that case, expect to spend the day! We were very tired by 6:30 pm when we finally left the museum. We got some comfort food at a convenience store and retired in the hotel for the night.

It was hard to get ourselves moving on August 15th. We left by around 9 am and caught our blue line to the City hall. From there we went to the Reading Terminal market. Reading terminal market has lots of yummy food in many different types of cuisines. Most people love it. We found it overwhelmingly large. We decided to eat multiple small breakfasts so that we could visit more than one store. We first ate a Southern omlette followed by crepes at a french joint. Both were delicious. After that I was ready to leave the place. On our way out, we chanced upon a Moroccan shop. We went inside to see if there was anything interesting. The shop keeper must have been an excellent salesman because he sold us a bunch of intriguing boxes! Seriously, you have got to go to this Moroccan store in Reading Terminal Market and buy one of his intriguing mystery boxes. We bought 5! Highly recommended. I would also recommend visiting Reading Terminal market for one or two of your meals.

Once out, we had some time before our planned visit to an art museum named Wonderspaces. We went back to the City hall. Leena played in the fountains and Tanya and I tried our hand at ping pong. It was very fun. I googled Dilworth park and found out that there was to be free live jazz music that evening at 6. I couldn’t believe it, because I had hoped to hear some live jazz in Philadelphia. Did I mention that this was a lucky trip?!

We went to see Wonderspaces. This was a beautiful and inspiring art space in a mall close to the Reading terminal market. I would recommend it. You would spend 1.5 hours maximum here.

From there we museum hopped to the museum of natural history. We were a bit leery of visiting overly large museums because they are so tiring and time consuming. So we stuck to museums that fell specifically in our interests and that took about 2 hours. That is why we stayed far away from the museum of art (even though we were curious). Museum of natural history is a beautiful place. Highly recommended. It took us two hours and that was about the energy we had. We learnt about taxidermy and also found lots of information on Tiktaalik, a 375 million year old fossil fish. Tiktaalik is special to Tanya since she and her friend researched it in high school and made a presentation on it. They shared the presentation with Dr. Neil Shubin, who first discovered the fossil. They were gratified to receive an enthusiastic response from Dr. Shubin. Ever since, Tanya has been in love with Tiktaalik!

After the museum, we took the bus back to the hotel. We had a couple of hours to rest before heading back to the City hall to listen to live jazz and play in the water fountains. Another interesting thing we saw: There were thousands of people well dressed in white standing in long lines. We were curious, so we asked what they were doing. They were there for Diner en blanc being held at a nearby park called Love park. You dress up in chic white clothes and bring your own food, sit and socialize. I believe they were expecting 5000 attendees!!

We left City Park around 7:30 pm. Taking our usual Subway, we were back at the hotel where we proceeded to spend the next three hours watching TV, drinking and resting.

Friday Aug 16th: We were worn out and ready to go home this morning! We dragged ourselves out of bed and went out for breakfast. We visited the same breakfast place that we had visited two days ago. But our luck had apparently finally run out. We sat outside as before. But it was super hot. Next to the restaurant was a dog shelter with dogs on display at the window. It turned out to be a real torture to watch the dogs waiting to be adopted. We left as soon as we could and felt sad and devoid of energy. We were done with our trip.

Back at the hotel, we rested some more. The plan was to check out and see if we could catch a glimpse of the liberty bell. However, there was a super long line to view the bell. Since we are not into history, we didn’t feel it was worth our time to see the bell. We were also running late for our train. We caught the subway and went back to the Amtrak station. The train ride back was uneventful but extremely relaxing. Johan was there to pick us up and we had a joyful reunion with the dogs as well. One of our Moroccan boxes was for Johan. He had a good time trying to figure it out!

Although I have visited Philadelphia in the past, we attempted and managed to a degree to catch the pulse of the city. We had some sweet interactions with the locals and felt some of that brotherly love! We had a great time and hope to visit again some day.