Philadelphia
I spent the weekend in Philly, taking the China Town bus down Saturday Afternoon. Not nearly as miserable a ride as the one to Boston, getting to Philly took about 2.5 hours and the worst of it was just getting out of the city. I arrived before the friend I was going to meet so I took the train across the river and hung out around Penn until she arrived. Didn't get a chance to see the lawschool but saw plenty of the rest of campus. Great architecture in the distinctive Pennsylvania style, red brick of course. The Penn Tower Hotel where we were staying was pretty terrible, no hot running water, dirty windows, etc... But it was free so what the hell. I met lots of new JCSCs since it was their training conference and a bunch of us went out to dinner at Cosi on campus and then a few of us went across town in a cab to South Street to check out the bar scene. Lots of people were out and about Saturday night and they were dressed in everything from punk to 80s to college prep or ghetto fabulous attire. Interesting mix. Fun bars too. We went home relatively early because everyone but me was exhausted and jet lagged. There were only two beds in the room and 5 people so it was kind of smushed and no one slept well, mostly due to fluxduating temperatures, lack of oxygen, and snoring.
Sunday morning a friend of my friend (this will get more complicated shortly) came from Baltimore to meet us with a van so a bunch of us piled in and went downtown. We saw the liberty bell and then got breakfast at a little diner (I think it was called Benny's). We went to the Constitution Center and rang a replica of the liberty bell called the Normandy Liberty Bell and heard some stories about the underground railroad in philly. Later in the day I went to Ben Franklin's grave, Independence Hall where the declaration of independence was signed, the rose and magnolia gardens (though there wasn't really anything to see there), the building that used to be the US Bank, Ben Franklin's house, Union Square Park with it's memorial for the soldiers of the revolutionary war, the oldest library in the country (I think), the Free Quaker Meetinghouse, the firehouse, and many other sights.
In the evening my friend's friend's friend came to visit my friend's friend who was driving me around in her van (the complication of not using names does irritate me on occasion). We had already pretty much trod through everything downtown that was open (the city closes at 5 on Sunday) so we drove out to the 'burbs to my friend's friend's friend's house. It was in a nice neighborhood and a very large house. The properties were fairly spread out with rows of trees in between rather than fences. Would have been very nice but for the humidity and abundance of crickets creating a cacophony in the trees. I must confess I felt a bit strange running all over hell's half acre with two strangers whom I hadn't met prior to that day. We went to an Italian place for dinner that was quite good, Burtuccis or something I think it was called. By the time we were done there it was pretty late and I needed to get back downtown to catch the last bus, which left at 11PM. I was a bit concerned that I would miss it but I supposed I could always crash somwhere until Monday and go back then, missing a day of work wouldn't be the end of the world (as it turned out my attorney didn't even show up Monday). In spite of getting a bit lost on the way back, I did make it to the bus and arrived safely in NYC at about 1AM. After trekking through the blistering subways I got home around 2:30 to find my air conditioning blocked and my room 83 degrees. You win some, you lose some...;-)
