Finally, Philadelphia

I finally made it to Philadelphia for fun, not for work. I was there for Thanksgiving, and am just now getting it together to post some pix.

We started touring the city with a trip to Ikea. This is the first Ikea in America, although it was originally in a smaller building down the road. Ikea is vast! It took over 3 hours to see everything in the store and to eat at the luncheonette. The arrows on the floor were a big help in navigating the vastness of it all.

Since Ikea pretty much took up Friday, we did our downtown stuff on Saturday. We met a pal and had breakfast in a cafe across the street from the historic Eastern State Penitentiary that, unfortunately, was closed for the season (it's now a museum).

After that, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where we spent hours in the contemporary wing seeing exhibits of Beauford Delaney and Edvard Munch's mermaids. We also checked out the dada stuff and got a close look at Duchamp's Urinal.


It was windy and freezing cold when we came out on the front side of the museum, so there was no way I was going to run up the steps like Rocky.

The Mutter Museum was our last stop of the day. No photos allowed there. Lots of creepy and fascinating medical specimens. Read Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation for info about the chunk of John Wilkes Booth that they've got in a jar. Eeeeeeeew!