And now for part 1 of your single butt-cheeked coverage of our trip to Philadelphia.
First of all, in keeping with the theme, I did my trip clothing shopping in 15 minutes on the day we were leaving. There should be a prize for that.
There is a Columbia store across the street from the office. I ran over there with my wallet. Tried on 6 things to determine my size, and then selected a pair of shorts, a pair of pants and a short sleeved shirt – all made of this modern magical material called something like OmNiRron or Tu2vaFibre. It’s like wearing clothes made out of FedEx envelopes. They weren’t super flattering but they had tons of pockets and ended up being terrific when we were wandering up down the hot and humid boulevards.
We took a red eye out, even though every time I do one I swear it’s the last time, because cheap and *direct* flights showed up on my fare alert so we snatched them up. If you fly out of Portland, it is generally not cheap or nonstop to fly anywhere outside of the region. I once had a work trip to Reno and I had to fly through San Francisco.
Luckily, our hotel could check us in when we arrived so I was able to have my first nap followed by a food finding mission and then my second nap. Then I was good to go.
Our first day we went to the Rosenbach Museum and Library which Bob picked mostly because it was close to where we ate.
It turned out amazing. It’s a collection of rare books and manuscripts, plus some other items like furniture and we saw some miniature paintings. We took the guided tour, which was just the two of us, and we’re such literature nerds we asked millions of question. Our guide seemed happy to have us. It gets our highest recommendation. We would go back in a hot second.
The other brilliant museum we went to was the Barnes Foundation. According to the website, the Barnes holds one of the finest collections of Post-Impressionist and early Modern paintings. It’s a gorgeous building and the works are displayed in ensembles rather than by artist or time period. It’s explained here. I had no idea the collection was so extensive when we started. It was worth it but by the end I was short-changing my experience, because my brain was saturated. Another 1000 star recommendation.
And speaking of the project of mid-August. As of today:
