Friday, June 24, 2005

Philadelphia Part 3

Did I mention that I love the music of The Innocence Mission?

So, Tuesday morning I had my meeting a 1o and got out of their by noon. We headed back towards Philadelphia. Our flight takes off 6:3o so we had some time to kill.
L U N C H !! (But where?)
Downtown of coarse!
You really can't say you have seen a city unless you visit the heart of it and get a feel of it's life. All of downtown is surrounded by neighborhoods that go on and on. The blocks are lined with 3 story townhomes like a workingmans brownstone but made of brick- tall and skinny. I don't know if neighborhood is the right word, because everything is intergrated -residential, commercial, dining, and office plus the sought after steak joints.
I guess the word I am looking for is edge. Between the edge of the river and the edge of the major interstate it is dense and there aren't any breaks. Those two edges are far apart. The major streets are a small 3 lane at best (one way with parking on one side and two lanes for traffic.) The minor streets are two lanes wit one for parking, maybe an 8 foot sidewalk and then the 3 story town homes (really close to the street.) The streets have a nice human aspect to them. Every thing is at the human scale - small streets, sidewalks, trees, bricks, 3 story buildings - it creates a nice outdoor corridor to walk through.

We parked near city hall - a very old building broken into quadrants with a center courtyard and a bell tower at one end. The street was bustling. This is a big time city, very urban. Shops and eateries, with people all over the place. I would have loved to explore more than an hour or so that we had. I didn't get to look at any of the historical stuff - maybe next time.

It is definately a place I'd go back to!

1 comment:

shakedust said...

I don't know much about Eastern PA, but on the Western side a lot of the houses are almost as tall as they are wide and only a few feet from the house next to them. Different from KC.