It's Always Sunny in....

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Philadelphia!!!!

This past weekend I drove up to Philadelphia to buy a 1974 Honda CB450 motorcycle. The reason for the motorcycle purchase is I'm going to ride it (along with 7 or 8 other like minded folks/fools) to Portland, OR in late May/early June. It's called the 555 (www.thefivefivefive.com). The 3 main rules are:

1) must a 1975 or older motorcycle
2) can only spend $500 on purchase and restoration of bike
3) 500cc or less engine size

So I spent $325 on the bike and have $175 with which to fix it up and make it road worthy.

Anyway, back to Philadelphia. I made Dennis go with me to help me drive (it's a 10 hour drive) and we got up to Phily around 3pm on Friday. We picked the bike up in Downingtown and made it to the Best Western City Center, where we parked the van and began exploring the neighborhood. The Best Western is very close to the Museum of Art and is in a very nice neighborhood (I think it's called the Museum/Fairmount district, although it could have another name).
We decided to eat lunch at this little local bar called the Bishop's Collar. Nice little place, but it was a little too early in the afternoon to have too much going on. Actually, it had a full bar when we talked in at 3:30 in the afternoon, so I guess it had more going on than I remember. A couple of Yuengling drafts and a veggie burger later we were on our way.
I had read about the Museum of Art's "Art After Five", which this particular Friday featured a big-band concert in the main hall, so we decided to go since it was so close to the hotel. I must say it was a very nice atmosphere, with a couple of bars and food available, and lots of folks mulling about. The band was actually a bit too 70's existential jazz for my taste, so after about 4 songs, I decided to take the 'Highlights of the Museum" tour. Amazing tour, actually an amazing museum, with just tons and tons of interesting things to see. I particularly liked the physical installations they had that transported you to the places represented. I can remember being inside a Zen Garden and an Indian temple, both of which were quite impressive.
So after the museum closed at 9, we made our way back to near where we had lunch and found Bridgid's. I have to send a major shout out to fellow travelblog traveler Sherry Berger, who suggested Bridgid's to me. I randomly found her blog on this site over a year ago when I was first contemplating my Argentina trip, and I remembered that she was from Philadelphia. So I e-mailed her randomly and asked her for some recommendations of cool/neat/uniquely Philadelphia places to hang out. She was gracious enough to reply (even though she's currently in Australia and not thinking too much about Phily I would imagine) and recommend Bridgid's as a bar specializing in Belgian beers...my kinda place. So we went to Bridgid's and it was great.
Saturday was spent touring the Eastern State Penitentiary and then doing the tourist thing downtown. We had dinner with a friend of mine's brother in law, Larry, who lives in town. He took us to Dante & Luigi's, which is a very nice Italian place in South Phily I believe. Sunday we packed it up and drove back to Knoxville. Phily rocked.

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Photos

Bishop's Collar
We ate here....right at 24th and Fairmount

Bridgid's
While at Bridgid's...I felt like too much of a dork to pull out my real camera, so this is from my cellphone's crappy camera.