The Purple Penguin

Yesterday was fun. Waffles for breakfast – or as Allison called them, fake waffles for breakfast. They were good even if fake. OK, not fake, just frozen ones that you toast. But then Joe pointed out he’d just been in Belgium. Smug git. [Joe: see previous posts.] [Kathleen: especially the one about parks in Brussels. Joe doesn’t have any bright blue jockies.] [Joe: Yet.]

When we woke up (well, when I woke up at 2am) we could hear what sounded suspiously like rain. So we ignored it. But it kept sounding like water dripping from the sky no matter how hard we ignored it. So finally looked outside and yep, looked just like a typical London morning. So why do I travel again? So when Allison woke up she turned on the telly to check the weather channel (ok, so I travel so I can see different things like an entire channel dedicated to nothing but the weather. Surprising that Britain didn’t do this one years ago.) The weather channel was of no use as it was forecasting rain, sometimes heavy rain, all day long. And tornados. But they were somewhere else. Maybe off the British coast? Even the local channel was saying rain. All day.

Oh yes, while Joe was checking the weather (by looking out the window) he got to see a bit of continuing story. Apparently the neighbours are interesting people with very interesting lives that they share with the neighbourhood – by having screaming rows in the middle of the street and having the police around on a regular basis. So when Joe checked the weather he got to see the nice policeman leaving the house. The rest of us missed it.

Allison dropped us off by the Liberty Bell on her way to a meeting. The park is quite nice. We headed for the Liberty Bell first which meant going through airport security procedure again. Well, we didn’t have to take our shoes off, but just about everything else had to come off. Watches, belts, jackets, coats, everything out of pockets. The displays are interesting and the bell itself is in a nice setting. But it was a zoo, with loads of people and school trips. The information centre was also quite nice and had the added benefit of being dry. Even if they didn’t have any postcards of the bell. But they did have an Eagles Monopoly game. And Eagles shot glasses. And Phillies Christmas ornaments. But no Liberty Bell postcards. Oh well.

We then walked. In the rain and wind. [Joe: we got to see statues and old buildings. The weather really wasn’t right for appreciating the surroundings.] [Kathleen: We saw the beginnings of democracy! Of Liberty (unless of course you had the wrong colour skin or gender). Of freedom (see Liberty for exceptions). Well, that was what all the information signs said anyway. Except perhaps the bit about colour and sex.] We walked around the Independence Hall and the historical park, then headed down Chestnut (Joe has decided Philadelphia is full of nuts as the other road we were told to perhaps take was Walnut).

It was a nice, though very wet, walk. We took shelter in Liberty Place, a small shopping arcade. There were few shops, the main area was the food court, I’m pretty sure there were more places to eat or get food than there were of all the other shops combined. And all sorts of food. From salads, sandwichs, to sushi, to tex mex, to pizza, to coffee shops, to Chinese, to turkey. But no doughnuts. Well, with that much food around we had to stop. Anyway, we were wet and wanted to dry off a bit. So a frozen fruit smoothie and a coffee and apple crumble cake later we were a bit drier and ready to face the elements again. (Guess which had which menu!)

We walked to the Franklin Institute which is a rather nifty science museum. They had a special exihibtion on Darwin which Allison wanted to see so we met up with her there. We had a choice of heading into the exhibition immediately or waiting half an hour so we chose to wait and went to see the giant heart first. Got to play blood cell going through the heart and lungs which was fun, but they could have done with a slide or two. [Joe: no comment.] After playing, um, looking at the displays in the heart area we headed up to learn about Darwin.

It was the first day of the exhibition and they were still setting up a couple of things but overall it was good. Very good. Cambridge University Library must be empty of anything to do with Darwin as it’s all in Philadelphia at the moment. They had Darwin’s notebooks (including the one with the scetch of the evolution tree), many of the samples he’d brought back from the Galapagus and elsewhere, his geological hammer, and other artifacts. They also had Galapagus tortaises (from Minnosota I think, but not from Galapagus!), igauna, and four froggies (though one seemed to be AWOL). Of course, they are frogs that like to hide themselves and then gulp down anything foolhardy enough to walk in front of them, but the other three were pretty obvious.

After the Darwin exhibition we went to see the electricity display, you can’t miss that in the Franklin Institute.

We then headed for dinner and a night out on the town. Dinner was wonderful, a really nice place right on the river.[joe: I had chicken dipping starts, with blueberry beer, then meatloaf with october fest beer.] The pub we then went to was nice, lots of import beers, and local US beers, live music and bit loud and we had a great time. Of course, this morning we’re taking our time gettin going.