2019 Life Logs, Day 275: New York to Cape Cod
2019 Life Logs, Day 275: New York to Cape Cod
Date: Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Weather: Overcast Turning Rainy; High 85, Low 49 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
On this unusually warm October 2nd, I made it home from New York, picked Ollie up from school and took him to meet Heather for his violin lesson, and then came home to get ready to leave again in the morning. Short as my visit home is, it is always a good feeling to get home and sleep in your own bed for a night. I can be glad to be home, but that does not take away from the wonderful time Lynne and I had in Philadelphia. Kevin and Claire were such gracious hosts. They moved off the boat and slept in their Roadtrek motorhome in the parking lot next to Pier 3, letting Lynne and I have the boat for sleeping. But we did spend our evenings together on the boat sharing stories. Chris and Georgette, who live on the boat next door, joined us for part of each evening and Claire and Georgette elicited sailing stories from Lynne and me. It was so much fun to back on a boat in a marina, sharing stories with other sailors. We enjoyed answering the questions about our circumnavigations:
What were the most fascinating things you saw? (That was a new question for us.)
What were your favorite places? (The most commonly asked question.)
What were your most interesting experiences?
What were the scariest moments?
And Philadelphia was so much fun. Despite the fact that I have blisters on my toes from walking seven and a half miles each day while there, we loved seeing the city sights. The old town historic district was my favorite, but Kevin and I had a great time on eclectic South Street at Tattoo Mom’s where we ate $1 tacos and walking along Penn’s Landing on the Delaware River. During the visit we walked to Chinatown, visited the Reading (railroad) Terminal Market, walked to Rittenhouse Square to have a fabulous organic vegan lunch, and walked through the streets of Society Hill with its million-dollar brownstones. Everyone was friendly and I did feel like I was in the City of Brotherly Love. Philadelphia is a great city to visit. And I just once again want to say a big thank you to two of my favorite people in this whole wide world. Thank you, Kevin and Claire.
Tomorrow morning, I leave very early to battle rush hour traffic around Boston in order to get to Kittery, Maine by 11:30 am to attend the Celebration of Life for Rich Kole, friend of mine and husband of my good friend Leslie. After the celebration, I will go home with two more of my favorite people, Detta and Tom Porat. I will spend the night at their home in Greenland, New Hampshire, and then head home on Friday. On my way I’ll stop to have lunch with my niece Lynn in Chelmsford, Massachusetts and make a couple of shopping stops before getting home again.
We went back to the Ben Franklin Post Office so Lynne could send a letter with the special post mark and then we walked to the National Constitution Center. Once we went in, we realized it was going to take more time that we had to do the tour, so instead we headed to The Bourse. This is a food court in the historic 1895 building that was once a stock exchange. It was remodeled and opened in July of last year. The name ‘bourse’ is used to refer to a stock exchange, especially in certain European cities and now in Philadelphia. We chose the first food stall we came to as the Hawaiian Poké bowls sounded delicious . . . and they were. We had five categories to choose from, with many options in each category, to build our own bowl. We all chose to have sushi grade ahi tuna on organic salad greens and had some combination of green onions, garlic, seaweed salad, edamame, carrots, cucumber, sesame seeds, and I had wasabi aioli dressing with mine. It was delicious. We then walked back to the boat to get Lynne’s things as she was heading to New City, New York to stay with a friend and start her visit with other friends and family in Nyack. Claire was leaving for Cold Springs on Long Island for a conference, so that left Kevin and I to visit and tour a bit more. We walked the waterfront down to South Street and then walked through a funkier part of Philly. We stopped at Tattoo Mom, a kicky little bar with lots of vegan food choices, to have $1.00 tacos and a beer. We solved all the world’s problems, walked back through the Society Hill area of Philadelphia, back to the historic district where I got to see the old Customs House, and then back to the boat. By the time we got my things to the car, it was 6:30 pm and I headed to New City to spend the night with Lynne and her friend Jane. I had met Jane before, but it was so gracious of her to invite me to spend the night. This makes my drive home tomorrow much shorter and I will avoid the early morning Philadelphia and New York City traffic.
Kevin flew to LA in the wee hours of the morning for a business meeting and will be back in tomorrow morning. So, Claire took Lynne and I on an all day historic tour of old town Philadelphia. According to Lynne’s FitBit, we walked 17,280 steps or 8.15 miles today. Whew! It was quite a walking tour. We hit all of the historic places in old town starting with Ben Franklin’s grave stone in the Christ Church Burial Ground. It is just a huge granite slab covered with pennies that people shower upon it. It was ironic when we ended the day in the Ben Franklin US Post Office. In between those two Ben Franklin landmarks, we walked by the Quaker Meeting House, the US Mint, the National Constitution Center, and the Independence Visitor Center. It was late morning by this time and we wanted to make an appointment to see Independence Hall. We were told that the first reservation available for a tour was at 3 pm, but we had much more we wanted to see, so that time was fine. We walked on to see the Declaration House display and then walked to China Town, and on to visit the Reading Market, one of the largest and oldest public markets in the country. We walked through what is now Macy’s, but was once Wannamaker’. There we saw the largest fully functioning pipe organ in the world as well as the bronze Philadelphia Eagle. We walked in and around the Philadelphia City Hall which is quite an impressive structure, and then we walked on toward Rittenhouse Square which is the heart of the city’s most expensive and exclusive neighborhood. We were all getting hungry but not sure where to eat when Claire literally looked up and saw a sign that said, “Organic Plant-Based Food.” We couldn’t resist and had a great lunch. It was nearing the time of our Independence Hall tour and there just wasn’t enough time to walk back, so Claire called an Uber and we were there in minutes. The Independence Hall tour was definitely the highlight of the day. We had a great guide who showed us the West Wing which served as a Court complete with a juror’s box and a defendant’s box where the defendant had to stand during the trial . . . thus the term ‘stand trial’. In the East Wing we got to see the room where the Founding Fathers wrote both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. As we walked back toward the waterfront, we ended our tour by walking through the place where Ben Franklin once lived and visited the US Post Office that bears Franklin’s name. It was a wonderful day.
Sam now plays on a much larger field, so lots of running and harder for me to get close-up photos. But today I got one of Sam throwing the ball in and one kicking the ball.
Even though Jonah was wearing a head band at this coach’s insistence, he’s is still the wild-haired kid on the field. Such a contrast to his good buddy Luke with his black hair.
