One foot forward

---

On Wednesday morning I packed all of my things back into my suitcase. I was hoping that I would be able to just take my extra carry-bag with my things in but I just have too much stuff that I want to keep with me. It is going to be a huge pain trying to lug a suitcase around but maybe when I have offloaded some things I will be able to pick up a smaller suitcase or at the very least mine won’t be so heavy! I then headed to 34th St. to look at the Macy*s sale. Mania. It was not as bad as I had anticipated but the staff seemed much ruder than the other shoppers. I bought a shirt and top for $16 (yes that is only included to reassure my parents that I am not spending too much) and then got the subway to Union Square to have my hair cut. I went to the real salon first but the woman there was lovely and told me how to get to the training school. The girl, Diana, cutting my hair was lovely but barely spoke English so her supervisor talked me through what I was having done. I realise to most people the details of my hair being cut is rather dull but it was a very very long time since I had a hair cut and I am still adjusting to the short hair now! After that I met Travis for lunch and then he put me on the subway to go and meet April for an afternoon of sample sales. I popped back into Macy’s on the way because they had forgotten to take the tag out of my skirt but it was just around the corner. I met April inside the Nannette Lampore sample sale which had some beautiful clothes reduced to around $50 or $100. They also had a sample sale sale rack which had loads of trousers and skirts and jackets for $20-$40 and I found a lovely dress for $30. Again, rest assured they are the only items of clothing that I have bought whilst away so far. We then went to a Fiori sale which was completely rubbish - overpriced and a very poor range of stock. We ran into some friends at the Delamans sample sale but none of us bought anything. I saw a beautiful pair of boots but they didn’t have the colour and size combination that I wanted and was not willing to compromise for $200. The boots that I brought with me need desperate re-heeling which is more essential in this weather. Rain and snow. April and I were going to head on to another sale (Arielle, Sophie and Melody had errands to run elsewhere) but it was very cold out and the other side of town so we went back to her apartment and hung out until I had to head home. Or tried to. I was getting on at canal street and had to swipe into the full length turnstiles when someone tried to come the other way and they blocked it so that I couldn’t get through and then my card wouldn’t work again because it had just been used. I went and tried to complain but it was rather useless so I got a single ticket and headed back. All would have just been a little annoying but it meant I had held Travis up which I hated because he had been so so good to me while I was there. When we were both back at his flat, Travis and I met his friend Rachel at a local French restaurant. The food was really good and it had a nice atmosphere. We didn’t get dessert but grabbed ice cream on the way home from the Haagen Dazs which was across the street.
Thursday I got up early and got all ready to leave and then went into Manhattan with Travis. He, very gentlemanly, took my suitcase to work with him while I attempted to head to a watch sale. When I got there the queue was all the way from the middle of the street where the sale was to the other corner. So I decided to just walk around instead. I walked from 18th St. where the sale was and just kept going North. I was looking for somewhere to get a coffee but nothing really appealed and I wanted to make sure I was not too far away from the bus station just in case I lost track of the time. It was a bit slower than usual as there had been an accident between a private car and a taxi on Broadway so traffic was being controlled by the police. I wandered to Times Square where Travis works and got a cup of coffee to take up a little bit of time so I wasn’t too early for the bus and then got my suitcase and walked the couple of blocks over to the Port Authority Bus Station. It was actually very sad leaving Travis. He had looked after me so well and done so much for me. When I arrived we didn’t really know each other that well and now I completely feel that I have a very good, very close friend in him. The best thing about travelling should be the people, admittedly that is not always the way that it ends up but it really should be.
I was getting a Peter Pan bus, which is run by Greyhound, to downtown Philadelphia. I admit I partly chose the company because I love the play so much but it was also the cheapest ticket. The bus station is absolutely huge and there is no way of knowing where your bus leaves from without asking the people at the information desk, which was deserted when I got there. I found the right place with enough time to spare. The bus was rather creaky and needed more than it’s fair share of fairy dust but it went so that was all that I needed. The view of Manhattan when going across the bridge was stunning. It has been raining a little and the whole skyline appeared to have been scrunched up and straightened out so it looked more realistic than ever before.
The bus journey seemed really short and was on the whole pretty enjoyable. A dear friend kept me entertained via sms which helped. About 90% of New Jersey seemed to be cranes and industrial bridges. Then the gardens actually kicked in and it was much prettier. I took lots and lots of photos of the journey. I can also now safely say that I have zero interest in going to Camden. I have never seen anything look less appealing.
The bus arrived into the station at 14.00 and Travis’ friend called me and we met up a couple of hours later. We headed back to his flat out in the suburbs. The apartment was beautiful, and huge! We hung out for a while and then went to eat. We had food at a restaurant/brewery that was all owned by the same woman. The Pizza’s were giant and really good, it had a great atmosphere and was pretty noisy as well. Afterwards we went to a café next door where we had drinks and I had the most amazing double chocolate cookie you could imagine. It tasted as if someone had baked a really rather good choc-chip cookie and then injected it with chocolate, and added chocolate coating, and left it in a chocolate infused room - just to soak up a bit of flavour. I was able to check the internet there and find out what I was planning on doing the next day as I was heading into the hostel in the centre to see people. We sat around at his apartment and watched some television and chatted for a while before crashing as we were both very tired.
The next morning I left a little after he had left for work and got the Trolley and the Metro line into town to drop off my bag at the hostel before going mega-tourist. It was a very cold morning and by the time I left the flat there was a decent covering of snow on the ground. I must have looked a very funny sight, wrapped up in hat and gloves and pulling a suitcase through a suburb on a Friday morning. I figured out which part of the road I had to stand in and then
I got to the hostel at about 10.30 and checked in and dropped off my bags. The hostel looked lovely, they have free wireless and are both central and close to a subway stop. I walked around the city and did most of the historical and tourist things. The historical Post Office and Franklin Court are very close by so I walked through the frame of Franklin’s house in the snow. They seem to be stretching the information that they have, the floor is covered in quotations from Franklin’s letters but they are barely relevant and rather repetitive. But it’s great to be amongst the history that I studied in Politics. After there I walked to the National Liberty Museum which was interesting but not worth the admission fee. It was more designed for children who didn’t already know the history. I then walked through the Bourse to the Independence National Historical Park which contains the Liberty Bell, Independence Visitor Center, Constitution Center and the triple of Independence Hall, Congress Hall and the Old City Hall. It was an overload of history. I particularly liked seeing the Liberty Bell and the Park Ranger who was there made it much more entertaining as he explained how they had tried to fix the crack in it, failed and so pretended it was deliberate. We then had a chat about Whitechapel where the bell was created and about travelling in general. The Independence Visitor Center was brilliantly amusing. There were people there who were trying to keep in ‘olde’ character and it was just funny as anything. I felt like I was in the middle of a Gilmore Girls episode (if you don’t get the reference then just look it up because it’s brilliant). Wonderful seeing them react to a digital camera…
The Ranger had suggested that I go to the New City Hall and go up the Tower to see the view and it was a brilliant idea. Only $5 and a view for about 25 miles around the city. Also because it was cold and had been snowing I was the only person up there so the guide talked to me for ages and I got to hear a lot of the history and some suggestions of what to do. I also got to see the Walt Whitman bridge from above which was brilliant. I was very close to the JFK Plaza so went and took the obligatory picture of the LOVE statue. I refused to do the ‘Rocky’ picture so this was acceptable! Then I grabbed something to read and sat down for a few minutes as I was starting to get tired. I walked down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway heading to the real reason I was in Philadelphia. On the way I wandered past the Science Museum and lots of lovely memorial statues in Logan Square. I ended up talking to a woman who was also visiting and was shocked by the amount of jay-walking…trying to explain London’s style of road crossing was a little difficult. I went into the Free Library, had a walk around and found an exhibit about Poe. Outside there was also a beautiful Shakespeare Memorial statue.
Then I finally made it to the Rodin museum. It was a mixture of plaster; bronze; stone; and marble statues. Many busts and the two sculptures of hands that I was really visiting to see. It is a tiny museum with only one large room and two small rooms leading off of it but I still spent about an hour and a half there. They allowed people to take non-flash pictures but the light was so bad it didn’t really do them any justice at all. I didn’t make it any further to the Museum of Art because I had been carrying around a lot of stuff and was pretty tired after not a lot of sleep and loads of walking! I walked back to the hostel via Rittenhouse Square and then the main shopping street and got to the hostel and took my suitcase up to the room to collapse.
When I got to the room there was no one else there, which was surprising as it is a 28 person room. I spoke to my parents on Skype while I unpacked and then people started to arrive. There were two lovely German girls; one from Dresden and the other from near Mainz who were over in America for a year doing nannying and then travelling on the weekends. There is a lovely woman also staying in the hostel long-term because she has had an accident and lost her memory so is here to have medical treatment and try to find her family. Then I got talking to a lovely woman called Angela who was trying to get a flight to Paris but it was overbooked so she was waiting for the next one. We got talking and decided to have dinner together to save eating alone. I had a shower and put laundry on and then we wandered out to a tavern on the next street. I had an amazing Cobb Salad and Angela had a Turkey Club sandwich which looked lovely as well. The guy who ran it was very friendly and great fun. After dinner I sorted out my laundry, re-packed things and crashed out for the night.

---

Photos

Cranes
Just for you dad...

Comments

[tonylinde]

road crossing
'London’s style of road crossing' Remember crossing the roads around Trafalgar Square to get to the National Gallery when you were little? Your first introduction to crossing London roads :)