This weekend we took a quick trip to Philadelphia. I love looking at cities at Christmas time. The decorations, lights and trees. There is a warmish spell, and even though it’s winter we are walking around without beanies and gloves, just light jackets and sweaters.
Lovely little streets.
Theatre district where we are staying.
What can I say, it started off b-a-d. We stopped to have one of our on-the-road jumbo breakfasts at Cracker Barrel and as we walk in there were people coming out and saying there’s a 45 minute wait. We could actually be in Philadelphia by that time so we hop back in the car and settle for bananas and muesli bars.
We get into Philadelphia, get settled and decide to have an early lunch. Hamish slips over in the restaurant bathroom and splits his chin open. It’s the exact same spot he’d previously cut when he was two, trying to climb up a waterslide ladder in a pool in Canberra. It’s right on the thick fleshy part of the chin and it looks awful. We did not take him to the hospital this time, but we do spend the rest of the trip telling him to slow down and stop wrestling his brother. It’s at that stage where if he did bump it again it would really open up.
We go see the Liberty Bell which is something that Dylan has wanted to see ever since arriving in the country. He learnt about it in Grade 1 and probably knows more than we do about the subject. We also decide to go on a tour of the town hall and court but the tour guide, who I nicknamed “Sergeant Yells-a-Lot” is unbearable to listen to and we slip out of the tour. Dylan thinks it’s hilarious at dinner later on when I call him “Major Loud”.
The big bell.
“Major Loud”
I find a Cuban place that I want to go to for dinner but Hamish wets his pants. I am furious! He knows how to go to the toilet and we had walked past a handful of Starbucks and he said nothing the whole time. We have to go back to the hotel to change him and by this stage of the night I am wondering why we bothered on the trip at all. So we change and set out for a very uninspiring dinner, because at this stage I cannot be bothered finding the restaurant I wanted to go to. But we did find Love Park which made me happy. There is one of these love signs in New York too. This one has a line of people waiting to stand under and kiss. So I just take a selfie from the side with the boys.
The next morning I wake up cranky and uninspired. The Nutcracker and Elf the Musical are in town and I cannot get tickets to either. I know I am going to have to probably see yet another science centre, museum or boy centric activity. But then they ask me what I want to do. So I tell them I want to go to the Museum of Art. I know it’s a long stretch and I expect there to be no hope of getting them to like the place. But we can run up the steps and pretend we are Rocky at least.
So we set off after breakfast and have the museum to ourselves apart from a few early morning joggers (also running up the steps and doing Rocky impersonations). It is drizzling and we get photos that look authentic because Rocky would have been training in that type of weather right?
Once we get inside, Dylan opens the map. He notices there’s a Van Gough and tells me he’s studied him in art class at school. I take a closer look and it’s the Sunflowers painting. My jaw drops to the floor, I am so excited and we head there first. It is so quiet being first thing on a Sunday morning and we walk through room after room of Picasso, Cezanne, Monet, Degas, Lautrec, Miro and many more. We see paintings which I’ve only ever seen in my high school textbooks. Beautiful glorious artworks that the kids enjoy too. We are there for a couple of hours and there’s many galleries that we skim through. There is a room full of knights armor which captures their attention and old furniture which keeps them fascinated.
There is a monet painting of a cold frosty morning and I ask Dylan what he feels when he sees it. He says he feels cold and I explain that’s exactly what you are meant to feel, that a good painting can evoke all kinds of reactions and emotions and is the sign of a good artist. We talk about how paintings were like a photograph long before they had cameras to take pictures and I show him that a landscape of Venice back then is pretty much the same as you would see today, including bridges that we’ve walked over and streets we’ve stood in. We talk about abstract concepts and information that we get from the graphic panel on the side of the paintings. We discuss brush strokes and looking at the image up close then far away. He tell me he is actually enjoying this more than he expected. It really was a great morning and my heart and head feel lighter and happy again.
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We jump in a cab and head across a bridge, into New Jersey to see the Battleship New Jersey. Because the weather is still a bit rainy there isn’t many people there and so we have the ship almost to ourselves. For a couple of hours we walk around the various decks and through the different cabins and quarters on our own. The boys explore the nooks and crannies and love going up and down ridiculously steep and narrow ladders to get to the various decks. They pretend they are sea captains and at one stage Dylan pokes himself in the eye and so he walks around squinting like a pirate.
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So if we hadn’t had the truly awful saturday, we would not have had the truly wonderful Sunday and all I can really do is philosophically wax on about how the bad days make you truly appreciate the good.
Today bring no words just a few air punches and champion poses – “Aaaaddriannnne”.
No Words, Just Thoughts... 