Two museums, two steakhouses, two films, two visits to a great bookstore: we ended up doing things in pairs during our stay in Philadelphia!
The museums were absolutely the highlights. First up was the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History. It’s located in the Old City near many of Philadelphia’s famous landmarks (such as Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, neither of which we had time to visit). It’s a beautiful place. The main exhibit explores the history of Jews in America, from the very beginning (which, we discovered, was 1654, when some Sephardic Jews settled in Brazil) through the end of World War II. There are lots of interactive features that kids will like and learn from; the information is fascinating–so much that neither of us was aware of!
The featured exhibit right now is called The First Salute and is about the Jews of the small Caribbean island St. Eustatius. Through artifacts and several videos we learned about how Jews supported the American Revolutionary cause through trade and finance; and also about the anti-Semitism that eventually led to their expulsion from a place where they’d lived and prospered for nearly a century. A wonderful look at lost history.
We’d been to the Weitzman’s gift shop on our last trip to Philadelphia a few years back and loved it. Unfortunately it’s currently undergoing renovations and so has been moved to the basement where its size and scope has been drastically reduced. Nevertheless it’s still fun to browse in and we found a delightful book called Yiddish for Pirates that Arthur has been enjoying.
The next day we spent many hours at The Franklin Institute. Both of us had visited decades before and both of us remembered the signature exhibit, a giant heart that you can walk through–something done much more easily when a child than when a 60something grown-up. (But we were glad to wander through it anyway.) We enjoyed exhibits about the brain and the human body, and saw a show at the Fels Planetarium called “Celestial Sights” that tracked recent advances in telescopes that proved quite interesting though not exactly what was expected planetarium fare.
We were delighted to discover the Philadelphia Film Society whose main theater was located directly across the street from our hotel. It’s a repertory house featuring old and new films in a variety of curated programs, sometimes with talkbacks and lectures. We saw Apollo 13 (new to me and excellent) and then the following night went to another of the PFS theaters in the Old City to see a new film called Blue Film. Lovely spaces with affordable prices for a big city film experience.
Our steakhouse choices were Del Frisco’s the first night and Butcher and Singer the second–both of them were excellent, especially the bread (popovers with honey and salted butter at the former, fresh hot biscuits at the latter).
And we did a bit of shopping, window and otherwise. The Barnes & Noble on Chestnut Street (close to our hotel, the Element by Westin) is a terrific bookstore, easy to spend hours browsing.
We capped this short trip with a visit to Reading Terminal Market, which is filled to the brim with food stalls. We had a nice lunch at the Down Home Diner, a place where you can sit and relax and have a nourishing and inexpensive meal, away from the chaos of the main market floor.
