2019 Life Logs, Day 278: Fiddles, Soccer, and a Goldpebble Overnight
2019 Life Logs, Day 278: Fiddles, Soccer, and a Goldpebble Overnight
Date: Saturday, October 5, 2019
Weather: Sunny with a Cool Breeze; High 63, Low 40 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage. East Falmouth, MA
It definitely felt like fall today, so it was a great day for Harvest Fest where Ollie performed with the Sonnay Fiddlers.
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He looks so tiny compared to the other kids as he is at least five years younger than anyone that was playing today. I am amazed the number of songs he can play and he is still three months shy of taking lessons for a year. Needless to say, I really enjoyed watching him play. And I left the Harvest Fest after Ollie finished his last song and went to see Sam play soccer. His team won their game today and they were very happy. The fall season has been tough for them, so I was so pleased to see them enjoy their win today. Jonah was busy all day today, but I didn’t see him until 5:30 pm when Ollie, Sam, and I picked him up from his friend Luke’s house. I then brought the three boys home with me for an overnight with Oma. We had steak and calamari for dinner and then watched a movie together. What fun!
Our principal, Roger Brooks, was there as well as Detta Porat and Cheryl Dolin. We listened to stories of Rich’s life told by his two brothers and his daughter Jessica and son-in-law Tom while eating delicious food and drinking wine in Rich’s honor. It was just as he would have wanted it.
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.
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.
