Penn's Landing

So we finally set off for Philadelphia, through thick fog over Staten Island and the New Jersey Turnpike – our slight delay now meaning only that the Falls at Paterson, the hospitality of the Amish and the humour-potential of staying in or near a town called Intercourse, Pennsylvannia will have to wait for a future trip Stateside. We checked into the Alexander, a pleasingly ‘retro’ (that is brown, but in a good way) establishment in the ‘Gayborhood’, and set of for our morning of American History. We saw the rooms where the Constitution was signed and filed respectfully past the Liberty Bell. It was all a bit underwhelming to be honest. We repaired to Chipotle for lunch. In the afternoon we strolled through Chinatown, skirted the edge of an industrial area known as the ‘Eraserhood’ because it was an inspiration for David Lynch’s movie and dropped in accidentally at the Betsy Ross House, which is a more, ahem, ‘unofficial’ version of the History – pleasingly kitsch and possibly all the more fun because of it. Later on we went down to the Delaware by Penn’s Landing for the view over the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, had some fabulous phosphates at the ‘old school’ Franklin Fountain and wandered back through Society Hill, dropping in to see the Dream Garden, a beautiful Tiffany glass mosaic in the Lobby of the Curtis Building. Possibly the highlight of the day was still to come, though – genuine Philly Cheesesteaks at Jim’s Steaks on South Street…