Last Friday around this time I was a whirling dervish of activity. I'd just opened a text from P, who messaged that she was on her way home because it was a light day at the hospital. I was sitting here in pajama bottoms drinking coffee and pondering whether to start working on an arbitration statement, unbathed, with dishes in the sink and dirty clothes all over the bathroom floor in front of the washer.
By the time P walked through the door the apartment was tidied up and I was in the shower. We sat and had a leisurely cup of coffee and pondered what to do with this gift of a day. My plan for the next few hours included lots of drafting but no appointments or hearings, so we decided I'd plug away until mid-afternoon, then we'd fly someplace fun.
But everyone else seemed to have the same idea, as we all enjoy what may be the last weekend before the delta variant drives us all back into lockdown. Every inn in every quaint little town was booked. Canada is still closed. We became discouraged.
"Hey--what about Philadelphia?" I asked. P'd never been, and it was a 48 minute flight from here.
Then it got better--the Braves were in town! Soon we'd booked a room at the Westin downtown, and had two tickets to the Braves and the Phillies Saturday night.
And off we went.
Forty-five minutes after takeoff from Elmira, we were on final approach into Wings Field, an old landing strip northwest of Philadelphia. Peg snapped this photo of downtown way off in the distance as we were about to land.
Oddly enough, Philly has no downtown executive airport. It took as long to Uber into town as it did to fly here from Elmira. A little longer, in fact. And our driver smelled really, really bad.
Once we dropped our bags we took off on a pedestrian exploration of downtown, discovering a cool outdoor restaurant district where we stopped for a preprandial. It was Friday night and the restaurants were all booked solid, but we finally found a tapas place with sidewalk dining and a passably good Portuguese red to wash it all down.
Or maybe there was more wine than that, because the next morning we felt pretty crummy as we embarked on a walking tour that began at Reading Market, Philadelphia's enormous food and craft emporium.
If you can imagine a cuisine, they have it there.
They even had a bar, where we ordered a little something to take the edge off.
Feeling a little more spry, we allowed Google maps to send us wandering aimlessly around the city, looking we thought for the world famous Love sculpture.
Instead, we found out that Philadelphia has a Chinatown. No kidding.
Eventually our seemingly random peregrination led us to the Love sculpture, in front of which I planned to snap a photo of the two of us as a symbol of our life together.
Instead we found a line, and a gentleman in a shirt labeled "Staff" who corralled couples and families one-by-one to stand in front of the letters, at which point he'd snap a photo and another staffer would sell it to you.
Screw that. Long ago we eschewed anything involving lines. Life's too short, we're too ornery.
So we snapped our own damned photo.
And yes, if you're a movie fan, that building in the distance is where Rocky Balboa ran up the steps as he trained to get his face caved in by Apollo Creed. There's even a statue of Rocky in front of the steps, or so we're' told because we decided it was too far and in the wrong direction for our walk.
Next stop was Independence Hall, maybe a mile back the other way. Walking down the boulevard we had the opportunity to step over the city's bumper crop of drug-addicted homeless people, sprawled half-naked and oblivious to passers by. They are everywhere. One of their tribe who could still walk strode along next to us for several blocks with his music blaring out of a bag of his possessions. The song, on endless repeat, delivered the chorus, "I hear voices in my head." Of course you do.
Arriving at Independence Hall we decided we could use a cocktail, and bumbled into a beer garden where you were supposed to order drinks on your iPhone and have the nice young person in the midst of an awkward gender reassignment bring them to your table. Except the drink they had on display at the bar that seemed ideal, an Aperol Spritz, wasn't on the online menu. At this point the encounter devolved into farce, as the person with the little almost boobs fumbled around with the old bald man's phone, trying to figure out how to "fool" the system by ordering a different drink but then walking ten feet to the bartender to tell him what we really wanted was to substitute an Aperol Spritz. Finally we all agreed it best that the relationship end, and P and I wandered drinkless back into the heat.
Across the street was the Welcome Center for Independence Hall, where the nice lady in the ranger costume informed us tours were booked for the day, but we could always tour Congress Hall and go look at the Liberty Bell. As we approached the modern structure where they keep the bell, we found a line wrapping around the building. Same for Congress Hall.
So we snapped a photo in front of Independence Hall, gave up, and wandered down a leafy street in search of a snack.
A block or so down the road we found a wonderful old bar, P.J. Clarke's, with expensive cocktails, amazing little northeastern oysters (unlike those cow tongue looking things from Texas they're selling along the Gulf Coast these days), and walls covered in fascinating old photos of the city over the last couple hundred years. They even have a book to guide you through them all.
Pump primed by our oysters and a drink, we walked down through an increasingly sketchy neighborhood in search of the most Philadelphia of culinary experiences, a Philly cheesesteak at Geno's Steaks.
Or Pat's King of Steaks. They sit across the street from one another, and have made a fortune over the decades pretending to be hated rivals. The ambiance at both is sort of like the Varsity in Atlanta, with plastic outdoor booths.
And lines. Phenomenal lines, stretching across the street.
We don't do lines, as discussed supra, so we snapped a photo and resumed our march across the city, this time back toward the hotel.
We started getting a little peckish after a mile or so, and as the neighborhood began to improve we ducked into a Belgian restaurant for braised beef cheeks, chicken wings with an amazing red sauce reminiscent of our chile colorado, and of course a trappist ale or two.
Which led to the need for a brief siesta, before we met our Uber for the trip down to the ballpark to see the Bravos.
Our seats were, as you can see, phenomenal. And soon I was scarfing down roasted peanuts, a sausage dog, and greasy fries, completely overwhelming whatever my Prilosec had accomplished that day.
And the Braves put up 15 runs. It was pretty amazing.
We rode the train back into town after discovering that Uber wanted $15 to take us to the park but $50 to take us home.
How about a nightcap? We settled in at the hotel bar for a nice glass of wine, and after a few minutes began to notice some familiar faces among us. As in, the Atlanta Braves, who were staying in the hotel. I met Dansby Swanson, another Marietta boy who'd hit a grand slam just a couple days before. "I'm nobody" said his friend, who in fact was teammate Austin Riley. Neither much wanted to be bothered, so P and I ended up visiting with Eric Young Sr., their first base coach, and his table of friends. They were happy to talk baseball, being older and a little more comfortable in their own skin, it seemed.
We crashed early, woke up late, and soon were in another Uber heading back to the plane. At the airport, a grandparent in a convertible had brought his grandson down to the fence to watch the busy flightline filled with mostly Cirrus's (I think they run a flight school for them there) and one very fast Columbia. The kid was delighted with all the planes buzzing around him. Ah, to have that joie de vivre again.
The flight home was uneventful and lovely, skirting clouds with the occasional ridgeline or farm peeking through the puffs. We were home by lunchtime, and after a lovely brunch at the Quincy Exchange, our regular Sunday brunch stop now, we collapsed into a long nap and then rallied for a quick nine holes before dark on the most beautiful golf course you've ever seen.
But now it's time to pay for the party. I have a mediation in a few minutes, then loads of drafting and trial prep to follow. Feeling strangely out of sorts this morning, like something bad is on the horizon. Maybe it's just organic, my poor tired old bod squeezing a message through my endocrine system that it's time to slow down a little. Or it's a premonition. Hoping for the former.
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