Planning Day 22, Summer 2018: Beauty and the Beast

In the past, we've only blogged trips on Little Rabbit's Planning. After a couple of days of migraine-inducing marathon planning for Summer 2018, I set myself a limit of 1 hour/day and decided to blog the process.

From Wikipedia: Interior of 30th Street Station

Today, I turn my attention to those fiddly connection issues that go with train journeys. On Monday July 19, Mike and I take the train from Philadelphia to Montreal. Like this.

• 4.00 - A train departure from 30th Street Station, Philadelphia at 5.14 am means that we certainly need to be up by 4am.
• 4.30 - And we certainly need to be on the sidewalk outside the apartment by 4.30. Probably our best bet for getting to 30th Street is to walk three blocks (in the dark) to 19th street trolley station and ride two stops to 30th. At the very best this could take 15 minutes. NOTE TO SELF: make sure to get the tokens in advance. Also, print the E-ticket for this trip.
• 5.00 - 5am is the absolute last moment for arriving at a station you don't know and finding your platform by 5.14. Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station is beautiful, though I’m not sure we’ll be awake enough to fully appreciate it. I may drop by the day before to have a look around if I can.
• 5.14 - Philadelphia to New York Penn Station on the North East Regional Service, calling at Trenton (5.45) and Newark (6.22). NOTE TO SELF: buy breakfast and preferably lunch and snacks the day before. I’ve made a note on my packing list to bring a small cooler bag because we may often need to carry food around. The question is whether we should also bring a thermos for coffee/tea?
• 6.40 - Arrive at New York's Penn Station

Update on May 26th - we just called Amtrak because we thought we hadn't given them our passport details for the Canadian border crossing yet. Turns out we had, but in the process we learned that the Adirondack will now be leaving from Grand Central instead of Penn Station, about 40 minutes earlier than previously scheduled. Way to keep us updated, Amtrak!

So anyway, most of what appears below (circles of hell and all that) is cancelled and the new plan is:

• 6.40 - Get to Grand Central asap, bearing in mind that it's bound to take 30 minutes, however we do it. Find the platform.
• 7.34 - Depart Grand Central on the Adirondack.

A visit to some of the more appalling circles of hell?

New York’s Penn Station is well known to be a disgrace to civilization, a thing to which even the term ‘monstrosity’ is scarcely applicable, since it’s more of a tangled, ill-defined morass. It’s actually worse than Euston Station in London, and that takes some doing. I don’t put up with Euston Station. I camp out in the magnificence of St Pancras just up the road until it’s nearly time for my train to leave. I was tempted to do something similar in New York, using the beautiful Grand Central Station as my waiting room.

The problem is that we only have 1 hour and 40 minutes to wait. Also, there is no checked baggage on this route, so we’ll be stuck with all our stuff. Assuming the train is even on time, it’s still doable, but not necessarily worth it. Besides, I had a lot of fun reading about the repulsiveness of Penn Station. It certainly inspires people to heights of eloquence, if nothing else. After a while, I actually felt motivated to view these horrors for myself. There is some hope that they will soon be consigned to history, and we really should do all we can to preserve the memory of them so that our descendants can see what not to do. Shouldn't we? But are we strong enough to endure the necessary torment? I'll decide later.

• 8.15 - We depart Penn Station on the Adirondack. (Not any more, we don't!!!)

An enjoyable little reading list on the repellance of Penn station:

Why Penn Station Sucks
Incredibly Upsetting pictures of Penn Station Then and Now
Inside America’s Worst Train Station
The Most Awful Transit Center in America Could Get Unimaginably Worse
Why Are the Signs at New York’s Penn Sation So Confusing
Penn Station is New York Commuter’s Hell and it’s About to Get Worse
Penn Sation’s New Concourse is Already Falling Apart
The New Penn Station: Everything You Should Know
It’s Time For a Better Penn Station 
Why a New Train Hall Won’t Fix Penn Station
Moynihan Station Lives Just Like Pat Dreamed it Would 
Cuomo Releases New Renderings of Moynihan Station 

And also:

Amtrak's policies on photography within stations
People sometimes wonder if you're allowed to take photos on station platforms. This would suggest that ticketed passengers who are entitled to be on the platforms also have a right to take photographs there.

Day 58: Tomorrow we leave Philadelphia

We will be taking the train all the way across the country, calling in Pittsburgh for dinner on Monday evening, spending a day in Chicago then taking the South Western Chief to Los Angeles.  Our final destination is Joshua Tree.  Although I love Philadelphia, I'm looking forward to being on the road again, for reasons related to our destination and for reasons to do with travel in its own right.

• I'm looking forward to being in a hot, dry climate rather than a hot, muggy one.  It's a matter of personal taste and health.  Philly's dampness tends to bring me out in a rash.
• I'm looking forward to being in a wilderness, rather than trapped in the urban sprawl. I can't wait to go hiking and climbing, see the stars, draw plants and avoid rattlesnakes.
• I'm looking forward to getting there, on a train across the whole US, with all those spaces in time on a train in which there are so many things I won't be able to do that I'll end up doing some of the ones I really wanted.
• I'm looking forward to a change of scene, just for the sake of the sharpened awareness I get from new places.
• I'm looking forward to having a whole new set of furniture, living space and a neighborhood to explore and get used to.
• I'm looking forward to Mike not working office hours out of the home any more, since that put a lot of pressure on me and Antonia.
• I'm glad that packing up all my stuff gave me the opportunity to review it and get rid of any accumulated uneccessary items - mostly paperwork.  I was starting to get that encrusted feeling.

I don't really have a list of plans for Joshua Tree.  Just a general expectation of hiking, reading, natural history and astronomy.  I expect we will be in our element and won't have to work too hard to entertain ourselves. We may have to re-arrange our schedules a bit to avoid the worst of the heat of the day.

Roadschooling unit study on studying people

 Of all the people we studied, Thomas Jefferson is Antonia's favorite. 
For writing what she refers to as The List of Complaints !

I thought it would be fun to talk about some of the things Antonia's been working on in our roadschooling.  I especially like it when we found ourselves working on a unit study without even knowing we were going to.  In the last few weeks we've learned a lot about the study of people.  I think that's partly because the US lends itself to that subject.  When you see how much they are into biographies and famous people and searching for heroes and mentors is when you realise they're not kidding about the whole individualism thing!  They do it a lot more than us anyway.  So here's what we have done:

• Read biographies on William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John and Abigail Adams.  The public library has been great for this.  I've just picked out picture books that are quick and easy to read, which is how we got through so much.
• Learned to use and make timelines of people's lives and important events and how to interpret them.  We used the timelines in the biographies and also made our own using this free internet site.
• Did some real and pretend interviews.  The real interviews were part of a structured exercise in one of our course books.  The pretend ones involved the exhibit at the African American museum in Philadelphia called conversations.  This is a brilliant exhibit that would really take too long to describe, but in it you get to 'interview' a dozen African American Philadelphians from various times in history.
• The most sophisticated thing we did was develop a biography map. This was based on the idea of the story map that's also in our books, but is a bit more complicated.  It's a form of things to fill out to structure our knowledge of a person we're studying: name, date and place of birth and death, places lived, family background, education, professions, talents and personality, health and so on.  We developed this after we read the book on the Founding Fathers and tested it at the African American museum. It was a tough project but very helpful.

What I liked about this project was that apart from learning a lot of facts about individual people and times we developed techniques for studying history.

Day 52:Baseball Game

 
So now we are getting to the heart of American life because we were eating Philadelphia cheesesteaks, drinking beer and watching the Phillies thrash Cincinnati.  I have to say that Cincinnati didn't seem to care whether they won or lost, which suited the audience.  So long as they were losing we paid no attention to them, and just talked amongst ourselves when they were batting.  When the Phillies came on to bat, we sat up and watched!  Our friends told me that these guys play three or more games a week during the season, so perhaps they are a bit strategic about when they put their backs into it.

I had a fabulous time and learned the rules of the game with the help of the American friends who took us.  The pitch was much smaller than I thought so there is a real feel of being close to the game. I would definitely go again if I had some friends to hang out with, though I don't think I could get as obsessed with the game for its own sake as some people are.

Day 47: Benjamin Franklin Bridge

We walked the bridge!  For us, it means going at least 6 blocks inland to get on the end of the bridge, then 6 blocks back out till we even get over the water.  It's worth it though.

Day 47: Adventure Aquarium in Camden

Just across the Delaware from our marina is the Adventure Aquarium.  If we had swum across, that might have been the easiest way of getting there, but never mind...  When we first arrived, it was full to the brim of schoolchildren.  They were interacting with aquarium by shrieking 'wow, a fish!!!!' (or whatever), at the tops of their voices, flashing the cameras on their cell phones at everything and buying trinkets.  We didn't know how we were going to survive a whole day with all the noise.  Luckily, they all went home at about lunchtime and we had a lovely afternoon interacting with the aquarium by drawing representatives from six major phyla of animals.

Day 46: National Liberty Museum

We wandered into the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia more or less by chance.  It is one strange place.  It contains:

1. Some very beautiful art works such as the 'flame' by Dale Chihuly,
2. Propaganda of the 'America, land of freedom' type,
3. The small print that tells the truth about extermination of Native Americans, slavery, incarceration, grinding poverty, hate crime, violence,
4. Walls of biographies.  Biographies of good guys, bad guys, Nobel Peace Prize winners and dictators, people who've overcome disabilities or fought for human rights,...

I don't know what to think about this place, I'm still making up my mind.  On the other hand, it worked out quite well for the roadschooling because we seem to have found ourselves doing a whole unit on biography.

Day 40: Thomas Jefferson and Declaration House

Today's roadschooling: the declaration of independence

Thomas Jefferson's parlour

We read the US declaration of independence and I tried very hard to explain all the sections of it to Antonia.  Later, we wandered over to the library to find a picture book about Thomas Jefferson (who wrote the declaration, for those who don't know).  Our nearest library is right next to Declaration House. I think this is a reconstruction of the house Thomas Jefferson was renting when he wrote the declaration, more or less on the same site.

In the library, after we read our picture book, I was looking at a completely unrelated book and learned that Thomas Jefferson had been unhappy with the way his colleagues had edited his declaration, but that he found it so hard to express himself orally, he didn't say anything.  I had been struck by the way the declaration changes style quite radically in at least one place, so it made sense.

Day 39: Fireworks over the Delaware

One of the great things about our houseboat is that we have the best view of the fireworks over on Camden Waterfront.  They seem to let them off very regularly and we just climb on to the roof deck of our boat and sit and enjoy.

Fireworks from our houseboat

We don't know why there are so many fireworks, but this evening is special as they are opening the Race Street Pier promenade.  This is a little park a couple of piers north or ours and it supposed to help to rejuvenate the waterfront.  Tickets for the opening event were $150 dollars each!  That's why our photos of the promenade are from the next day.

Antonia bouncing down the brand new seating

I can think of a few things that would improve the usability of the new park (and only cost another couple of billion dollars!).

1. More attractive pedestrian access from the Old Town district, 
2. Pedestrian access to the walkway over Ben Franklin bridge, perhaps from the stone pillar that's right between Old Town and the pier.
3. An outdoor cafe in summer even if small.  Or even an ice cream stand!

Day 37: Museum of American Jewish History

I've mostly been catching up on my own work, but sneaked in a visit to the Museum of American Jewish History.  Getting in is quite a big deal.  They have airport level security bag checks.  They made me empty out about an ounce of water that was left over in my gym bottle.  Strange, because most of the exhibits are not of intrinsic value and a lot of it is actually panels of information and stuff like that.  The history of Jews in America is a close parallel for the history of Europeans in general.  The exhibits brought out a lot of questions of freedom.

Religious freedom was a main concern for earlier settlers.  In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the exhibit echoed what I learned from family: that the US offered the freedom to avoid getting killed, but not a whole lot else.  It has always seemed to me that conditions for immigrants to the US show just how little it takes to be better than death. It seemed like for every wave of immigrants, religion became less of a concern, which led to the ongoing question of preservation of identity.  The exhibits talked about the tensions this posed between personal freedom for individuals (to follow religious rules and customs or not) and the 'freedom' of the group to survive.

Days 32 and 33: Paris from Philadelphia

There are two temporary exhibitions that focus on Paris running at the same time in Philadelphia. In fact there seems to be a whole 'French Connections' program going on in Pennsylvania.  Does that mean we're forgiven for saying the Iraq war was a bad idea??

Free to Be

Free to Be is at Philadelphia's African American museum.  It looks at the lives and work of African Americans in Paris in the first half of the 20th century, especially artists, writers and musicians.  One of the major themes of the exhibition is that Paris consistently offered more opportunities to black artists than the US at that time. I remember hearing the same thing about London in connection with Paul Robeson.  It's interesting to compare the importance of African Americans in the European capitals early in the 20th century, compared with the African and West Indian dominated black cultures we have now.

They included Paul Robeson in this exhibition, which I though was stretching it a bit, since his connections with Paris were pretty minimal.  He did tend to get everywhere and his internationalism is one of the reasons why I'm interested in doing some research on him, so I'm not complaining.  They exhibited his costume from Emperor Jones and I think it's the first time I've actually felt moved by a piece of cast off clothing.  I stood there quite a while trying to figure out how tall Paul Robeson was! Next to this was a mink coat belonging to one of the most Parisian African Americans you could possibly get: Josephine Baker.  I had never realized quite how much of a French patriot she became.  That was the showbiz side of the exhibition.  The rest was pretty interesting to as well.  It was curious to see which of the paintings had noticeably French characteristics, either in the subject matter or the style.  I also learned more about W.E.B. Dubois which was cool.  Unfortunately, the program of films and concerts that went with the exhibition was over by the time I got to Philadelphia.

I had a secondary goal at the African American museum which was to look around the permanent exhibits quickly and see if they would be interesting to take Antonia to.  I know I tend to complain about the educational quality of museum exhibits.  Pretty often, I'm afraid they suck!  But wow! the exhibitions here are coherent and interesting. The Conversations one is especially suitable for kids Antonia's age, so I guess we'll be back.  The only thing that could go wrong is the room filling up with 30 children pressing all the buttons at once. 

A Window on Paris

The primary focus of the exhibition was Chagall's career in Paris, and the painting the exhibition was named for was a beautiful centerpiece.  There were some other excellent Chagall paintings and several etchings.  There were also a lot of works by other expatriates in Paris, especially Russians or East European Jews.  There was a whole room on the set and costume designs for the Ballet Russe.  The quality of the paintings and sculptures is very high.  It's basically a visual experience.

The most interesting of the Perelman Building's other exhibitions was The Peacock Male, a collection of the most flamboyant male clothing they could find.

In which I get in to Philadelphian life
I wanted to read Burning Lights by Bella Chagall for my research and tracked it down to the Central branch of the Free Library, in the Art Reference Department.  For the first time in my life, I had to wait for 20 minutes while they fished the book I want out of the bookstacks.  Then I nearly fainted when I saw how thick it was because I had to read it right there.  Fortunately, Bella had originally written it in Yiddish, which was really a childhood language for her, so even the translation reads pretty fast.  I got through it in two and a half hours.


I've also found a gym that'll work for me at least until I get to LA and I've figured out where to get fresh bread.  That's a luxury item in the US, and boy, does it cost money!  And I've wandered through the streets of the Old City on Friday night.  It's not as 'rough' as Britain but there's plenty of people around.  Most of them seem to be wandering in and out of art galleries wearing black mini-dresses in the rain.

Day 31: The Philadelphia Flyers break a wing

I spent most of the day getting Antonia off for a week with her grandparents.  I didn't even get out until 5.00 pm to have a drink with Mike as he finished work, so I thought I would have nothing to write about.  But actually, any time you go out in a new country interesting things happen to you...

1.  ...such as a truck blocking the road while it unloaded.  Why is that interesting?  Because I have spent 18 years stuck behind trucks with Mike and listening to him say "Only in France".  I made him take a photograph as evidence.

2.  If you want to know where to get Thai take-out food in Philadelphia Center City, there are people wandering the streets in uniform whose job is to tell you. Apparently, Center City residents have to pay extra taxes for this kind of public spending, but it's easy to see how it works as marketing for the businesses here.

3.  If some people overhear you finding out where Thai take-out food is to be had, and they want some too, they come along with you.  It turned out that one of our new companions played ice hockey.  We were on our way to watch the Philadelphia ice hockey team sort out the Bostonians (ha!) at my brother-in-law's, and they were off home to do the same.  The guy we met had toured Europe with an ice hockey team, and since ice hockey is also big in Grenoble, I was interested in his experiences.  He told me that it is a much more aggressive sport here, and that in Europe, he usually ended up with about 30 penalties in the first minute.  It is true that the kids who play ice hockey in Grenoble are much more fascinated with their own skill on the ice than their boxing capabilities.  When I was small in France, I used to watch ice hockey one evening every week while my parents went bowling, so I was looking forward to this new cultural experience.

Unfortunately, the Philadelphia Flyers flew about as well as the dragon in Antonia's latest story!

What a disgrace!  The match only lasted about twenty minutes, because my brother-in-law had pre-recorded it and there were large sections he could not bear to watch.  Although only the goalie was formally sent off, the Flyers didn't seem to have the best offensive game going - apart from the moment where two or three of them decided to down sticks and engage in a longish boxing match with the Bostonians.  Although ice hockey rules include all kinds of technical details I hadn't been aware of, scrapping is perfectly OK in the North American version, and the referees just stand around until the fighters fall on the floor.  After that, they politely encourage them to get back to playing ice hockey.  At least I got my American culture fix!

Day 30: The walls of Philadelphia

Mural Mile
Philadelphia is famous for its murals.  It even has an organized Mural Arts Program to make more of them.  It's one of the things I love about Philadelphia.  The city is organized on a near perfect grid system, and every so often a house is 'missing' from the grid and replaced with a small car park.  Most of the murals are on the empty side walls of buildings, facing the car parks.  This afternoon, I copied the Mural Mile walk onto my SEPTA (public transport) map, and Antonia and I set off to view murals, walking through the pretty old neighborhoods of the Washington Square area.  It wasn't until we saw the first mural that Antonia realized that this has got nothing to do with graffiti.  Then she was hooked.

Toastmasters meeting
A while ago, I decided that some form of speaking was probably going to be part of my future career plans.  Since I've spent a LOT more time writing than speaking over the last 20 years, I feel pretty incompetent. It seemed like Toastmasters might be a good opportunity to get a bit of practice in and see how it goes. So today, I went to a meeting, to see what it was like.  I actually think that in the last 18 years, this is the first time I've met any Americans who weren't introduced by my in-laws and directly connected with my in-laws in some way, so it is a big deal for me!

The meeting turned out to be at the top of a 23-floor skyscraper belonging to Blue Cross Insurance group.  There must be hundreds of people working here and most, but not all, of the 'Toastmasters are probably employees. I was relieved when I walked in to discover that I'd managed to pitch the dress code about right, despite having almost nothing suitable for ordinary office wear.  I was really happy to be welcomed by a very nice guy who explained the meetings to me, and to have another conversation with a Brit who recognized my accent at the end of the meeting.  I was happy to be in a group with a bit more diversity than I usually get to meet in America.  It reminded me of London.

It turns out that the meeting and the Toastmasters program are very structured, which is probably a good thing.  I got caught up in listening to the three speeches which were so good, it was scary!  I have mixed feelings about how practical it would be to participate in Toastmasters while traveling, but a lot of people have been pretty welcoming and encouraging in that respect as well, so perhaps I will give it a go.  OMG, the first thing I would have to do is come up with a speech introducing myself!  Hmmm!

Fireworks
Just as we got Antonia to bed, we got an impromptu treat:  fireworks on the other side of the river.  We got up and sat on the roof of our houseboat watching the display.  They were beautiful, but we have no idea what they were in honor of.

Day 29: Liberty and Patriotism

It's been quite a week for patriotic displays in the media, what with the royal wedding in Britain and now the assassination of Bin Laden.  The newspapers show the Americans throwing street parties, on the actual streets you would hardly know it had happened.  Just the Fox building broadcasting its headlines to the outside world, one person offering a non-committal 'Heard the news?', and the State Department emailing Mike a travel warning for the whole planet, suggesting that they, at least, are not sure the world is any safer.

The Liberty Bell

Yesterday, I was complaining about the tone of patriotism at Valley Forge.  Today we decided to concentrate on the Liberty Bell, and of course, we got a whole lot more of it.  This, I think, is where the real damage is done.  The education at the Independence site consists of patriotic propaganda, hero-worship and anecdote.  But have you ever tried to explain the concept of political liberty to a nine-year old?  Or the meaning of the constitution?  It takes a while...  At these sites, people, children especially, are learning that something is very, very important, before they have the maturity to understand what it is.  Then they fixate on the symbols: a flag, a founding father...  The primary sources of the period include some of the more interesting things I've read, yet they completely debunk the almost religious aura that's been created around America's formation.

Antonia beside the Liberty Bell, with Independence Hall in the background

Antonia on Liberty (I thought she did well, like I said, it took a while)

People might not feel free because they have to follow the law, but people feel more free if they make the law themselves.  If you are religious, you want to feel free to follow your own beliefs.

The Library
I decided the public library could solve some of our limitations over the number of books we can carry around.  We would drop in and read through a few picture books about William Penn, George Washington.  The first task was to figure out the library's organization.  Children's fiction books are in a separate children's area.  I searched in vain for the non-fiction section until I discovered that children's non-fiction was integrated with adults.  Except for biographies, where there is yet another separate bookcase reserved for children!!  We found a space in the huge Chinese language section of the library, and read picture books about William Penn and the Liberty Bell over each others shoulder.

Day 28: Valley Forge

There are two main reasons to visit Valley Forge near Philadelphia.  The first is to get out of the city into a more natural environment.  The second is to have a look at the winter campground of George Washington and his army.  It is not absolutely perfect for either of those purposes in our experience. 

1. Getting there and back from Philadelphia can be a bit of a struggle.  There was a lot of traffic, roadworks and poor signposting when we went.  This was made worse in our case by the fact that we had to get hold of a car before setting off, and return it afterwards. We did not make it to a trail head until after noon.  Then of course we had to have lunch.  We had time to stroll around for 3 hours, after which we fought our way home.  Valley Forge is NOT worth 3 hours of walking for 8 hours of miscellaneous messing around. There is a public transport bus between Philly and Valley Forge which may be a much better option. 

Covered bridges are supposed to keep the ice off the roads

2. As contact with nature goes, it isn't a perfect place. Valley Forge is pretty to drive through with open fields and woodland and a few reconstructed log cabins at strategic spots.  But, we quickly realized that the trail around the park, which we would have liked to have walked, runs along the busy road for miles and miles. We just weren't ready for that much noise.  We checked the map more carefully, found a trail at the other end of the park and went back to get our car.  We got on the Horseshoe Trail which goes on for miles and miles until it joins the Appalachian trail.  Very soon we found we were leaving the park, and entering what Mike calls suburbia.  Homes that look like enormous plastic dolls' houses are dropped at random in the woods, like so many witch's mansions, assuming that  Barbie would be playing the witch.  The fences that delimit their property boundaries hem the trail in on both sides. I am allergic to this type of environment and Mike said it might go on for 30 miles or more, so we turned back into the park. 

This cottage and vestigial white picket fence are in the back yard of a house ten times the size!

Valley Forge is a tiny oasis in a wasteland, well, sort of.  The woods here feel surprisingly barren as there is much less undergrowth than in deciduous woods in Europe.  We are just learning to recognize poison ivy, the Super Nettle, and there is a lot of it.  We stopped for a while to admire the bluebirds and listen to woodpeckers, before descending Mount Misery at the point where a covered bridge crosses the road.  If I was already feeling 'poisoned' by the whole ambiance of the place, it was to be Mike's turn. All along the creek are big signs warning fishermen not to eat anything they catch as the water is polluted.  Polluted water rightly freaks him out.  It did not seem to be deterring the fishermen, one of whom pointed out a mass of half a dozen snakes lying on an exposed branch.  He told us they are common and often drop on him out of trees as he pushes through the narrower parts of the creek.

Truly, Valley Forge is the sort of place where witch and ghost stories are made. I wasn't sorry to return to the more wholesome urban mess of Philadelphia.

3. As 'history' goes, this is probably more of a patriotic ritual.  Still perhaps that's your thing!  Valley Forge was the winter campground of George Washington and his army, now a National Park.  I suspect there is very little to see in the way of actual remains, but there are reconstructions, statues and memorials, park rangers in costume and other miscellaneous stuff scattered around a 5 mile circuit.  It feels a bit like the Stations of the Cross! Eventually we reached some real buildings, one of which was rented by George Washington as his winter headquarters.  It has been filled with period furniture, uniforms and plastic food in the kitchen, so in fact, it is also very much a reconstruction. The tone of American patriotism in use at these sites is starting to really grate on my nerves, and I'm saving my patience for the Independence park in Philadelphia.  Its effect on Mike is electrifying, though.  Suddenly he is using the pronoun 'we' to discuss the War of Independence with his daughter (who is half English, and who's first ancestor to live in America was in about 1903)!!  Fortunately, the information in the Visitor's Center is quite well laid out and thoughtful, but I often feel that this kind of information can be obtained just as well from a book.

Reconstructed log cabins at Valley Forge

Moe fresh air in and near Philadelphia

• Walk the Benjamin Franklin Bridge between Philadelphia and Camden (5 stars!)
• Cycle the Amish farm country in Lancaster County (4 stars)

More American patriotism

• Declaration House in Philadelphia (also a reconstruction)
• The American Liberty Museum (4 stars for strangeness)
• My first July 4th celebration

Other bloggers talk about Valley Forge

• Mara explains how to make a history field trip of it on Mother of all Trips
• Jillian of I Should Log Off was there in winter.  I would like to do that too

Valley Forge information site

• The official National Parks site

Day 27: The Quest for the SS United States

The SS United States is a ship that Mike took between Britain and the US when he was four years old.  Its empty hulk is waiting to the south of us in Pier 82 for somebody to decide they can afford to do something with it.  Even from here, we can see its monumental smoke stacks and our goal today is to go and have a look at it.

The Philadelphia Belle being steered off for a cruise

1. The first part of the route takes us through Penn's Landing full of beautiful old ships: the tug boat, Jupiter, the cod fisher, Gazela, the SS Olympia, the restaurant,  and one submarine, Becuna.  The seaport museum is also here: we will visit that when we have a full day.  Jupiter and Gazela are being restored by volunteers, Jupiter is moored alongside a floating workshop and Gazela is always full of people who will get the chance to sail her eventually.  There is also the Philadelphia Belle, which is pretending to be a paddle steamer and taking people on mealtime cruises.  It's vestigial paddles don't even touch the water, but we can all tell just by looking that they would be no use if they did.

The Olympia (right) is a museum boat, the Moshulu (left) is now a restaurant

 

2. The bike trail along South Columbus Boulevard hugs the water, taking us past a new apartment block built in imitation of a cruise liner, a heliport (that explains all those helicopters) and the beautiful piers 39 and 40.  They must be contemporary with ours, but they are even prettier to look at.  They are used for storage and warehousing of various kinds.

3. After the coastguard's office, the bike trail splits away from the road and dives off into a kind of wilderness along the water edge.  A brand new section passes through a new but barren garden that is supposed to filter runoff from rain.  It comes to an abrupt halt at what looks like a property boundary, but we pick it up again on the other side of an abandoned car park. Mike told me that when he lived in DC, he was part of a committee for creating bike trails and it was a nightmare negotiating his way through all the bits of private land.  It looks like something similar happened here.

Abandoned car on overgrown pier

Nature is reclaiming territory here.  Antonia and I saw our first American robins, and there are many other birds I don't recognise.  In the thin woods, two Asian ladies were collecting a plant that looks like our silver weed.  They said it was used in Chinese medicine.  The piers are abandoned, either just posts sticking up out of the water, or overgrown rectangles of woodland.  We followed a path onto one of them, letting Mike go first as he is the only one who can recognise poison ivy and poison oak, the Super Nettles of America.  The pier was not exactly uninhabited.  In its center was a very orderly campsite belonging to a heavily bearded man who was just leaving on a bicycle.  Around the edges, nesting Canada geese didn't appreciate our arrival.  Right at the very end was the ancient wreck of a pick-up truck with a swastika on the side.

4. We followed the bike trail until it deposited us in the mall where our sister-in-law took us shopping last night.  We discovered we could get no further along the water, and we were hungry, so we bought sandwiches from the supermarket's tiny coffee shop and ate them there.  I bet not many tourists have eaten here, in fact it seems to be used at least partly by supermarket staff on their breaks.  The supermarket is strangely quiet for a Saturday lunchtime, and the car park is half empty.  How different from home.

5. Back on South Columbus Boulevard we discover that Pier 74 is gleaming and modern. We can see the Walt Whitman bridge quite close and we realize that we are near our destination.  We still weren't prepared for how suddenly the SS United States appeared as we passed the buildings.  She looms impressively over the dockyard, rusty and peeling with green patches all over her sides.  It was quite a sad sight.  Mike gave us the guided tour from behind the railings.  That is as close as we can get.

The SS United States, imprisoned in Pier 82

 

6. We just missed the number 25 bus and received estimates of the next one's arrival at between one hour and 40 minutes, so we flagged a cab back to Pier 5.

Day 26: A walk through Philadelphia

1.  To reach town from the marina, we have to get through an enormous highway.  The easiest way is to turn left and take the overpass that leads into Market Street or Chestnut Street.  Today we turned right, threaded our way through some kind of building work, then followed the monumental Benjamin Franklin Bridge as it slowly lowers itself to ground level.  Here, the highway has an underpass.  In the middle was a type of cardboard tent, which might or might not have contained somebody.  In front of the tent, perched on a crate, were a pristine leather bound black Bible and a stuffed animal that had seen better days.

2.  We found ourselves entering the old part of the city along Race Street.  There is only one problem: it doesn't look particularly old to us, notwithstanding the horse-drawn carriage that was calming the traffic and a single cobbled street.  We slipped into the Synderman Works art gallery on Cherry Street, because we liked the look of it and saw very beautiful things:

Ron Isaacs
Lindsay Feuer and Bonnie Seeman

I still think I'd rather travel than collect art, but I can very much see the appeal of the technique and beauty of these pieces.

3.  We were heading for the Independence National Park area of Philadelphia and started to encounter tourist groups, including a whole party on Segways which amused us both.  We went to the Independence Visitor Center in the hope of starting to get a grip on Philly's rather overwhelming historical sites.  We collected information and ended up learning the meaning of all the symbols on the US seal and some stuff about the Underground Railroad.  After that, Antonia wanted a snack, so we sat around while she wrote a postcard to her old school and I listened to the people at the next table discuss the intellectual merits of the Oprah Winfrey show.

4. We went home on the overpass, past a monument to the Irish immigrants to the US.  On one side of a huge bronze hill, the starving sit raggedly amongst graves and barren land.  As they reach the peak of the hill it transforms into the deck of the ship.  Wide-eyed with joy and suddenly well-dressed, they walk down the gangplank into the land of freedom and opportunity...  We took the opportunity to peek in at our neighbor's living arrangements on our way home.  The Pier 3 marina is less full than ours, but has one very pretty houseboat with a sloping roof.  The apartments behind the slightly weather-worn corrugated metal that faces onto the marina have inner covered courtyards filled with tulips.  And, like many US apartments, they have a lobby with a concierge who gave us a suspicious look through her glass window.

Day 25: The Houseboat Pegasus

Our houseboat is the kind that's like an ordinary but tiny house built on a raft.  It is possible to move it around in the water, but it isn't really for going anywhere. 

This advantage of this type of houseboat as living accommodation is that you get a lot more width.  Inside it's much more like an ordinary house than a barge.  You know you're on a boat because it rocks up and down, more or less noticeably, depending on the weather and on what is going on outside.  The disadvantage with this king of houseboat is that not as much attention has been paid to designing the space. Although it must be more than twice the size of our Queen Mary cabin, there is less room for our stuff!  Anyway, we have a fairly large sitting room / kitchen then a few steps to a lower level where there is a bedroom, a tiny shower room and a couple of closets. The great thing is that we have a lot of outdoor space: two deckchairs on the roof where I'm typing this, and a big covered deck with table, chairs and grill at the front.  We are much better off in this respect than we would be almost anywhere else in Philly, and I really need to be able to be outside.

If they have energy efficiency ratings in the US, the houseboat would surely score a G.  Even when you're inside, you're as good as outside, except for wind and rain protection. When we arrived, it was unusually hot and muggy for the season and we had several storms. Since the AC hadn't been installed for the summer, it was equally hot and humid inside. The lower levels of the boat seem to be at or below water level, which is perhaps a bad design move.  At any rate they are quite a bit damper in feel than the upper level.

I hate AC and welcomed the immersion in the local climate.  This is not something I've had the chance to do in the US before, and it's one of the things that has always stopped me feeling 'in touch' with the place.  Mike was looking forward to the AC.  Anyway, it's now cool and dry and we had to turn on the heating last night!

How the utilities work:

Along the docks floating boardwalks are stands shared between two moorings, supplying electricity and water.  The cooker and grill use gas bottles, there are gas and electric heaters.  The bathroom facilities are interesting.  Flushing the marine toilet is a two step process.  Turn the handle one way and you pump water from the marina into the bowl.  If the tide is very low, and the boat is sitting in sludge, you can either wait, fill the toilet from the shower, or go use the toilets in the marina building.  Turn the handle the other way and the toilet flushes into some kind of waste grinder.  Legally, it then has to go to a storage tank (to be emptied regularly?), or it might just get away with some kind of onboard treatment plant, which our boat doesn't have.

It seems we have a small onboard hot water tank, heated electrically, though I have not found it.  It has the capacity for a couple of small shower though it hasn't run out on us yet.  The shower needs a pump, though this seems to be mostly for getting water out of the drain rather than into the shower head.  At any rate, if it is not on, the water collects in the bottom of the shower.

The marina building has laundry facilities, a shower and two toilets.  Not everybody has bathroom facilities on their boats.  I wonder if using these facilities isn't in any case the most ecologically friendly choice.