Philadelphia

Friday, August 10, 2007

We wake up early -- 6:00 a.m. and get ready to drive the 1 hour 55 minutes to Philadelphia from NYC. We dropped off our suitcases at the hotel and drove to the Barnes. We needed to get reservations weeks before, but the guard let us in an hour early. We had to see the Musuem before they moved the collection to central Philadelphia. Dad said the paintings are unusual because it has not left the Barnes since the collector died. He also said the museum itself was different.

The Barnes Foundation

We arrive at the Barnes Foundation . It really is a strange museum - it looked like somebody's house. Mr. Barnes was an art collector who became rich by inventing a silver alloy used to clean wounds. He hung up his paintings in a different way. He hung them up with the Renoirs and the Matisse's together but in a very random way. The walls were not white and he put up lots of other kinds of art beside the paintings - like african masks and greek helmets and a big lock collection. I like the way he arranged the collection. Like the african masks beside Picasso's funny faces. I hope they won't change the arrangement when they transfer it. It would just be a Met, only smaller and with too many Renoirs.

I learned one interesting thing: Van Gogh was inspired by Chinese paintings - which used black outlines around the figures. we bought this poster to put in the lakehouse.



















Then we had fun picking out and counting all of the Renoirs, Matisse's and Cezanne's. The Barnes is also strange because it does not have name plates on the walls. They have tiny brass plates on each painting that just says who the painter is.


From afar, you can't tell who painted the works. But it was easy to tell because the Renoirs had spots of light, Cezannes had geometric patterns in strange dark colors, and the Matisse because of the strange bright colors and the weird flower-like things. Mom calls them arabesques. After so many Renoirs, we found them a little foofy. I liked the Cezannes the best.

T: I liked the tiger painting by Rosseau on the second floor. I like tigers and i liked how dark the paintings were, and it was really well done. I also liked these geometric sculptures with one eye. I forget the name of the guy. I have never heard of him before.




The Arboretum

After 2 hours, we go down to the garden within the estate. It was huge and had weird trees like the monkey puzzle tree from Chile, and the cork tree. We had great fun by the pond, where we caught tons of worms to feed to the goldfish. The garden was beautiful, with big trees and tons of nooks. Mom liked the trellises.

We leave the Barnes, and drive to the center of Phiiladelphia where we would see the King Tut exhibit.


Reading Public Market


Before we do, we go to the Reading Public Market where dad is going crazy sampling food - pulled pork, hoagies, Bassett's ice cream, and soft pretzels. We had fun with Philbert, the pig. Someone had dropped a bill which contained 8 zeroes on them - but it was folded, and we could not figure out how much it was really worth. Dad thought it was counterfeit. There was so much good food in there.

The Franklin Institute


The Franklin Institute was huge but not as full of stuff as the NY Hall of Science. We are here to see the King Tut exhibit.

The exhibit was huge, and they laid it out well - but i was disappointed they did not have the Golden Mask. I really liked the crook and flail and i finally saw the blue war crown that i have read about. The best piece was not King Tut but the statue of Akhenaten. It was very strange looking - not like a normal Egyptian statue. It looked almost medieval.

After we went through the exhibit, we went back again to look at things more closely. Then we watched the mummy movie. I did not like their IMAX theater because it is not like the Hayden where you get a good view wherever you sit. I felt a little vomitty. I realize now that you need to sit all the way in the back for theaters like these.

Later, we went around the museum. I really liked the flight area because i got to design an aircraft. We also saw the big Franklin statue in the foyer, and we remembered it from National Treasure. We have to watch that movie again. It has all these Philadelphia places in it.

We go back to our hotel and look for cartoons on tv. Nothing. So we read and slept.

Touch Me Museum

We wake up early, eat breakfast, and go swim in the pool. We drive into Philly at 9:30 to the Touch Me Museum. We are a little doubtful, because it is a kids' museum for ages 0 to 7. We hoped it would not be so kiddish.

We liked only a few things - the dragon exhibit from Vietnam was okay – we learned that Vietnamese dragons spit out water instead of fire. There was a cool play about the legend of that.

We also saw some Sendak mascots, also Alice in wonderland. I only really liked the natural-looking blocks, and built a nice castle with dad. Then we got all these little dragons for only 65 cents each. That was cool that they sold it so cheap. We stayed there for a few hours and then went to get lunch.

Cheesesteaks

We were doing a taste test – Pat's or Geno's. Dad said we should split up since the lines were long. Mom and Taj went across the street, while dad and I stayed in the line at Geno's.

Mom and Taj got their cheesesteaks first. They said the people were very rude and mom was a little nervous, but the line did go fast. Dad and I got ours and we passed the 4 chessesteaks around. We all agreed, Pats was better. It had more cheese, and there was more meat. The meat was also more tasty. The provolone cheese was not good. The chiz-wiz was really yummy.

Later, we walked to the Italian Market and got fresh fruits and Italian Ices. We concluded that fruity ones were better for Italian ice. The chocolate one was not good. Mango was the best.

Academy of Natural Sciences

After lunch, we went back to the Museum Area, and went into what looked liked the American Museum of Natural History - only a lot smaller. The exhibits were all kind of the same- it had dioramas, and dinosaur bones. We liked the dig etc. but nothing too exciting. The only cool thing there was the Amazon Exhibit.

The Piranhas ( they don't eat people), and the anacondas, and the 3 types of rivers – the black, the white and brown. I liked how the white swirled into the black river like coffee.

The Best part was learning about animals I never heard of before: the Knife Fish which gives off electric currents and one guy measured it through sound.

The MUCKFISH was even cooler. It is the size of a hotdog, and it has gills but they can breathe air. They live in the mud. It is kind of like the platypus in that it is halfway between animal families.


Cebu

We picked up a flyer about this Philippine restaurant on Chestnut street – so we decide to try the food there. We just got appetizers and dad was happy to get a San Miguel Beer - a Philippine made beer you can't get too much in America.

We got some pork riblets that were VERY good- they tasted like longaniza with bones. We also had some raw fish and scallops.

Monk's Café

After our appetizers, dad wanted to go to this Café that had good mussels. There was a long line, so we could not stay. We walked around, played with our dragons on the steps of some houses, got some bbq and went back to the hotel to sleep.

Tenth Prebyterian

We eat breakfast and go to church. Mom was excited because she read a lot of the books that their Pastor wrote - Pastor Paul Tripp. It was a big church, and the building was nice. Their old pastor was Pastor J.M. Boice, who, mom said was also famous.

After church, we decide to go back to Monks café and had a fun meal – mussels ! We loved it ! Dad taught us to use one mussel to get the inside of the other mussel. We had good bread to dip into the mussel sauce. We walked around the neighborhood and found a really nice street -- Delancey.

It was very narrow with a brick street. We played with our dragons on the stoops – again.. There was so much sunshine around, and we later realized that it was because the buildings were all very low.

Independence Hall

After church we decide to walk around the parks in the Historic District. We saw Independence Hall, peeked at the Liberty bell. Then there was a very cool story-telling chain – there was a map we were following -- 13 places with storytelling benches . They gave us a flag and at each stop, we would get star stickers to put on our flags.

Bench number 1 was not very kid-friendly. He was an actor and he kept looking at the adults to please them. The story was cool - it was about Margaret Madison, and how William Penn allowed her to be a witch – even if she wasn't. Penn was supposed to have said " Broomsticks are allowed in Philadelphia."

Bench number 2 was about Harriet Tubman and the underground railroad. 3 was about Sigmund Lubin who was jewish and invented the movie camera, 4 was about the quaker hunchback only 4 feet tall, who protested against slavery ( he refused to drink anything with sugar, or wear clothes from slave cotton) , 5 was about the guy who invented rubbing mud for baseball – Lena. We touched the mud and it was very silky.

The last bench we visited at 4:00 was the most FUN one. It was about the freedom of speech and the food you hated to eat. The storyteller was reaaly funny. He had a funny voice, and when he gave us all the stars, he said
" This is the final episode of Story tellers gone wild. This story teller is going to break all the rules. He is filling up an entire flag with stars!"

He did this because we ran out of time and since we lacked a few more stars, he just gave them to us ( THIS WAS supposed to be a secret). We rushed to Franklin Square to get our free ice cream and free carousel ride. Luckily, the park would not close till 9:00 p.m.

Franklin Square

This park was small and strange because it had a section where you needed to pay to get in ( mini-golf etc.) We just got our certificate for the stories, and our free coupon book and got chocolate ice cream ( a really big one). We also got a free ride on the carousel, so we picked our animals ( taj picked a lion of course) and mine was an eagle . We so wanted to ride a griffin, but there were only real animals, so we rode the lion and eagle as a compromise. The ride was fun but short like all carousel rides. It was good we did not have to pay for it.

There was a pyramid and sphinxes in the square made completely out of sand ( no armature). We got samples of the sand . We are supposed to mix it with glue and water, form a block, and then carve it out. This looked like a good idea.



Rodin Museum












It was getting late, and we needed to drive home -- but we really wanted to see the Thinker. So we went to the outside of the museum and just posed with the Thinker.

We saw he had a funny hat on, and his back is very bony. We loved his toes. We also thought it seemed unfinished – not very smooth like the DAVID we saw in Florence. Dad said Rodin could be like an impressionist painter – where the brushstrokes are very obvious . That seemed like a good illustration.


We played around there a bit and went off to do our final stop before driving home.


Steps of Philadelphia Art Museum

The museum was closed, but we thought we would just do one thing: ROCKY. We had to run up and down the steps, and put our arms up. We did. Took pictures and went home.



That was a very fun weekend.