Welcome to another week of life on the road. I’m Genie Leslie, a freelance writer working remotely and traveling the country with my husband.
This week, we’re in Philadelphia, enjoying stand-up comedy and 90-degree heat.
Did you know that Bastille Day is a big holiday in Philadelphia? Neither did we.
I mean, I don’t know how big it actually is, but last weekend when we started googling what to do in Philadelphia that Saturday, the results were a resounding “celebrate Bastille Day.”
We found a French restaurant near us that closes down the block for an annual Bastille Day celebration, complete with outdoor tables, lawn games, and live music. It was...fine. The restaurant itself sounds great, if you’re eating inside on a regular day with the full menu. But their street food menu left a lot to be desired. What I thought was a shrimp sandwich that cost $14 turned out to be just five shrimp on a stick with dipping sauce ... that cost $14.
A bit disappointed, we sat in the shade, ate our expensive snacks (this could not be counted as a meal at this point) and listened to the music. And we quickly realized that the lead singer of this group didn’t seem to know the lyrics to any of the songs they were covering. The crowd was singing along with much more accuracy than the man on the microphone.
We gave up on the Bastille Day celebration and started checking the map for other places to go. Reading Terminal Market wasn’t too far, so off we went.
Well, this is where we should’ve eaten. A huge market in an old railroad terminal, you can buy a hot meal ready to eat or your groceries for the week (or both). Bakeries, fish stalls, ice cream shops, sandwich pubs—they’ve got everything. Aaron ordered a few oysters while I grabbed some fudge from a chocolatier.
Before we headed home, we decided to check out Franklin Square. We didn’t know anything about it, but it was a park and we’d been walking through the city for a while now, so open space and trees sounded nice.
Since we’d been baking in the heat, we sat on a bench in the shade near a fountain and watched kids run around in excitement. All we wanted to do was take a swim in that fountain, but we settled for catching the occasional breeze drifting off the water as we watched the dancing streams of water. Aaron started out very unimpressed by the fountain’s choreo, saying it didn’t hold a candle to the Opryland fountain. But the fountain was just warming up, because we soon learned (when the music started blaring) that there was an entire water show set to the Rocky theme song. It was pretty awesome.
Walking back to our car, we passed by a couple more historical Philadelphia landmarks. The Declaration House, where Thomas Jefferson supposedly wrote a draft of The Declaration of Independence. Washington Square. (Looking at the map, we apparently walked within a block of The Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. Oops.)
We really enjoy the architecture of Philadelphia. The old buildings with turrets. The brick work. Street after street after street of row houses. Everything feels historical and interesting. I read somewhere that the average age of a home in the US is 37 years, but the average age in Philadelphia is 93. There’s a lot of physical history that you just don’t see in a lot of places.
Between the walking and the 90-degree heat, we were pretty wiped out by the time we made it back home. But even though the Bastille Day celebration was a bit of a letdown, we ended up with a lovely Saturday exploring Philadelphia. And really, what else do we need?
What else is going on?
On Monday, we impulsively picked a restaurant off the map and went over for a quick lunch. There was almost no one there, and in talking to the bartender, we discovered that they’d just opened on Friday. The food was good, but we also took advantage of the quiet (well, the TV and speakers were blaring, but the restaurant activity was quiet) environment to chat up the bartender and learn more about Philadelphia. Aaron always asks people what’s the one thing they’d tell visitors they have to do, and his recommendation was Helium Comedy Club.
On Friday, we saw Lisa Ann Walter at Helium Comedy Club! It was great. She hasn’t done stand-up in a long time but she’s working her set back up in the wake of Abbott Elementary fame. It’s so fun to watch a comedian working out the kinks in a set and figuring out what works, and it reiterated Aaron’s dedication to ending up somewhere with a good comedy scene.
At the time of writing this, I have not yet seen Barbie but you better believe I’m going to.