Peter and I met at the Ritz in Philadelphia this past Friday to celebrate our good friend Zoe's birthday. Zoe's husband, Jim, drove her down to Philadelphia from upstate New York under false pretenses so that running into us at the Ritz bar would be and was a total surprise! Happy Birthday, Zoe! The festivites continued from there. We ate dinner at a lovely restaurant called Davios on the second floor of a converted bank. ( Everything in Philadelphia seemed to be housed in converted banks, the Ritz, Davios, stores.) Exceptional waitress, exceptional food and lots of catch up since it's been a while since we have seen Jim and Zoe. Jim and Peter have known each other since 8th grade so they go way, way, way, way back.
On our walk back to the hotel we stopped at Chris' Jazz Club and made a new friend, Ronnie, at the door. Ronnie let us in without a cover charge and asked that we send him this picture which I did.
The next morning the exceptional concierge at the Ritz steered us to the trendy Continental restaurant on Chesnut Street for brunch. The Continental has a retro 70s feel to it that makes you crave a martini even if you don't drink them! Rattan chairs hang from the ceiling around tables. Lots of aqua. The best, and I mean the best omelete I've ever had in my life. But the most intriguing thing about the Continental is the two way mirrors in the bathrooms. As you come down the stairs to the bathroom hallway you see people in the men's and women's bathrooms fussing in the mirror. Very voyeuristic and strangely uncomfortable and exhiliarating at the same time. You are embarrassed to look but you wanna look. An impromtu tour of the restaruant's retro rooftop nightspot by the Continental's manager, Steve, revealed another odd bathroom scenario. We later heard that an unusual bathroom experience is one of the trademarks of this restaurant's owner. Made me want to see what else he came up with in his other restaurants around town. It certainly made the Continental memorable.
It was Zoe's birthday Saturday, the actual day, September 22nd, so we took our lead from her for our next activity. And she didn't let us down! We walked through Philly looking for the Eastern State Penitentiary, one of the oldest prisions in the country dating back to the 1830s and the world's first penitentiary, a place designed to inspire true penitence in crimminals. The massive stone walls with a castle like entry way hold within them seven cell blocks radiating like spokes in a wheel from a circular center. The ESP (as it is known!) closed it's doors in the 1970's and is now the object of a preservation campaign. You can tour it but with caution.
The first thing they ask you to do when you enter is to sign a waiver in case a part of the prison falls on your head during your tour. Al Capone was incarcerated there among other notable criminals. We did see an escape tunnel one of the inmates dug, and we were able to stand in the individual cells and experience the isolation so carefully designed into the building by the original architects. Overall the place is impressive, daunting, overwhelming and scary with an eerie beauty thrown in. It's also a photographer's paradise.
If going to the Eastern State Penitentiary wasn't bizarre enough, getting there gave us a surprise adventure. We ran into one of the oddest sights any of us has ever seen: a Hari Krishna parade. Ok, you might say, you've seen them yourself in your day, but did yours have a Scottish tattoo playing the Hari Krishna theme, and was yours attended by no one less than Ben Franklin in a horse drawn carriage? Well, ours did and was. We were glued to our corner on the boulevard because we couldn't believe what kept coming next.
Being in prison is thirsty business. We stopped at Triumph, a micro brewery, and sampled 8 different beers. We walked to Penn's Landing near the waterfront and convinced a very sweet street musician to serenade Zoe with the birthday song. He did better than that. He dedicated one of his own songs to her. You can't beat that on your birthday!
Several people had mentioned Monks in the Old City section as a fun place for dinner. Monks is a Belgian tavern specializing in Belgian beers and mussels. Noisy, crowded and solid, good food.
Saturday night, date night time back home in Chicago, we went to see the King Tut exhibit at the Philadelphia science museum. Although the show was selling out day after day, there were tickets for nighttime viewing. So at 9:30pm we headed over there to enjoy magnificent artifacts from King Tut's time, some of them found in his tomb. Somehow we missed the memo telling us that the King, himself, was not on this tour. In the final room, we were greeted with a tomb sized block decorated with a morphing digial image of King Tut lying in his tomb with several pieces of jewelry on him. No gold death mask for us. Our tickets came with entrance into the IMAX movie on mummies which we dutifully went to at 11 o'clock. By then we were running on fumes and the movie was disjointed and confusing. More than one of our party took a snooze during that one!
Sunday, our final day in Philly. Another great suggestion from our Ritz concierge James (why didn't I get a blog photo of him?!) was brunch at Rouge on Rittenhouse Square. A beautiful day, just perfect weather. The bistro style cafe opened onto the park. We met our friends Dorothy and John, Philly natives (he by way of Ireland) at Rouge so that Peter could hand off his keys to 822 to them.
They are staying at our New Orleans place for Voodoo Fest in October. Watching Peter relinquish his NOLA keys was like watching someone hand over a vital organ. I had to talk him into giving Dorothy BOTH keys convincing him she needed both to unlock all of the necessary doors.
Lots of delicious food and good conversation later, we went into the park across the way for a special tapping lesson from Jim. Jim has tremendous healing ability and is saying goodbye to several decades of practicing law to begin a new career in healing through hypnosis (visit his website at jimleehypnosis.com). He led us through a simple technique to alleviate and clear fears and anxiety. We sat on a bench in the park and performed this technique in the midst of all of the other Sunday afternoon activity happening around us.
Time to say goodbye. Thanks and good wishes all around as everyone headed back to their homes in Binghampton, Chicago and Philly.
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