One Day in Philadelphia: Artsy Narwhal Horns, a Chasm in the Liberty Bell, and One-Upping Aaron Burr

I had one day in Philadelphia, and I was determined to make the most of it. My NYC apartment is housing for New York University students during the year, and their summer move-in date wasn’t until Sunday morning. I couldn’t move in early, so I spent Saturday night in a hotel in downtown Philadelphia.

My first surprise was the hotel’s hilarious location – smack dab in the middle of Chinatown. It was dumpling house, dumpling house, dumpling house, Sleep Inn!, dumpling house, dumpling house, dumpling house. Not that I was complaining – lots of great Chinese food at my doorstep!

After leaving my luggage at the hotel for the morning, I walked down to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

I passed the Robert Indiana “AMOR” sculpture in Sister Cities Park, which had no line at all for photos, unlike its sister statue in LOVE Park across the way, which had a line 50 people deep. Then I cut through Logan Square, whose fountain reminds me of Buckingham Fountain in Chicago.

The path to the museum also took me by the Rodin Museum, which I would’ve also visited if I had more time. Here’s ‘The Thinker’ watching over the city.

From there, it was up the famous “Rocky Steps” to the art museum. I saw one guy tackle them on his bike – he’s much, much braver than I am. The view when you turn around at the top is stellar.

Inside the museum, I was most impressed by the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collections. There was a special exhibit going on called “The Impressionists’ Eye,” featuring work by Renoir, Cezanne, Degas, Van Gogh, Cassatt, Monet, Manet, and more. Highlights were Van Gogh’s sunflowers (each one, like a person, has its own personality on the canvas), Renoir’s “The Bathers,” and work by Mary Cassatt.

I also enjoyed the Yoshitoshi exhibit with ukiyo-e Japanese art. Here’s one piece I particularly loved: “I Want to Cancel My Subscription (Woman Reading a Newspaper).” Note the sexual undertone demonstrated by the inclusion of a cat, which suggests an analogy between the woman partaking in the “popular fad” of reading a newspaper and a cat in heat.

I saw more Impressionist work in the European galleries, including a piece by Cassatt, sculptures by Rodin, and this lovely creation.

Looks normal, right? Dude and his lover?

I DON’T THINK SO. The piece is titled “Self-Portrait with Sister.”

All righty then.

Some distinctive Picassos in the same gallery also caught my eye.

This one is me after the past week.

Here’s a cool one of Picasso as he might have looked in life. It’s a self-portrait.

This was a strange one. It’s a long line of navel, or belly button, models!

Then I reached the Duchamp collection, which is probably what the museum is most famous for.

He’s known for his readymades – one particular urinal comes to mind – but he also worked in oil, as seen here in “Nude Descending a Staircase.”

Then I spotted a Brancusi – I remembered this one from AP Art History class.

A strange one – like a narwhal embedded its horn in a Twinkie.

Full-blown Japanese temple.

Renoir’s bathers (my favorite – he was such a perfectionist that he would erase huge swaths of the painting with white paint and try again and again until he got it right).

Cassatt’s “Woman with a Pearl Necklace.”

Neat surprise in the American gallery – a teapot made by Paul Revere!

After visiting the museum, I headed back to my hotel to check in. On the way, I passed through LOVE park, which has street preachers just like Indianapolis.

While I’m on the subject, I should also mention another connection between Indy and the “City of Brotherly Love.” People are some of the nicest here of any city I’ve visited. I’m pretty sure I haven’t lifted my luggage on to a train the whole time I’ve been here, and I’ve taken four of them. People will point out elevators in SEPTA stations, lift luggage, say hello to strangers (what?), and generally are just pleasant human beings. They remind me of Hoosiers.

I also checked out Reading Terminal Market, which is a city within a city. It’s like City Market if it filled a football field, added 20 bakeries, a produce market, 20 butchers, a bevy of international food stalls, and the smells to match. It dates to 1893.

The market is laid out in a grid system similar to the streets of Philadelphia, but it’s still all too easy to get distracted by a delicious scent and lost in the maze, which is the reason there are bins full of maps at the entrance.

It’s not just bakeries, though. Fresh seafood, produce, Indian, Chinese, American, and Pakistani cuisine all abound. I even spotted some gourmet corn dogs!

One of the most famous tenants is DiNic’s Roast Pork and Beef.

Termini Brothers is a bakery with tiramisu cakes, cookies, and sheets of Italian cannoli.

After my market adventure, I finally made it back to my hotel. I dumped my stuff and headed in the opposite direction to Independence Hall, the building where both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were debated and adopted. Also nearby: The Liberty Bell, which once graced the steeple of the Pennsylvania State House.

My takeaway from my bell sighting? That’s not a crack that splits the copper; it’s a chasm!

I get that metal workers purposefully widened the original narrow split that developed in the 1840s to preserve the bell (the technique is called ‘stop drilling,’ and prevented the crack’s further spread and restored the tone of the bell), but still! The first repair failed, a second fissure developed, and this crack silenced the bell forever.

Before touring Independence Hall, I stopped by the Visitor Center gift shop and spotted one of these. Obligatory magnet purchase!

Now it was on to Independence Hall. Two rooms are open to the public, and while it’s cool to see a recreation of where the founding fathers worked, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much their butts must have hurt after sitting in these things for eight hours.

But I’ve got a leg up on Aaron Burr now, to use a Hamilton reference. I’ve been inside “the room where it happened.” Fun facts: The basement was once the city’s dog pound, Benjamin Franklin was known to occasionally trip other delegates from his aisle seat, and windows were kept closed, even in the summer, so no one outside the room would overhear the discussions.

To cap off the night, I walked next door to Signers Garden, the meeting place for my ghost tour of the city. We walked to Independence Hall, Washington Square Park, and through the Society Hill neighborhood, which reminds me of Lockerbie in Indianapolis. And just as Lockerbie has the supposedly haunted James Whitcomb Riley home, Society Hill has the Physick house. The doctor who once lived there supposedly kept his mad wife locked in an upstairs room (cough, cough, Jane Eyre, anyone?), but she’d break free at night sometimes and run through the hallways screaming. Her ghost now supposedly haunts the site.

I took an Amtrak train from Philly to my NYC apartment this morning, then moved in and went to Target for groceries and Bed, Bath, & Beyond for a pillow, towels, etc. this afternoon. Then I popped over to Times Square and my new office (and located some delicious bao). New York City post coming soon. Tomorrow’s my first day at The New York Times!