Brotherly Love

At this very moment, I’m sitting out on the balcony of a Philadelphia hotel room, twelfth story. There is a pleasant breeze swirling, and the enormous neon scrolling sign on top of a nearby building is telling me its 87 degrees, which I don’t doubt. I was enjoying myself quite a bit until a squad car on the street below started making obnoxious noises for no apparent reason. It just drove away.

How I found myself here is an interesting story in itself, as my friend told me couple of days ago he was going to Philly to look at colleges, and invited me to come, which I greatly appreciate. Now that I am here, the city has proven to be a lot livelier than I had expected. I like it, as far as I can tell from about fourteen hours here. In fact, even though we have to get up early tomorrow to get tickets to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, I’d rather enjoy myself just sitting out on this balcony all night.

Of course, it wasn’t quite this nice during the day. The heat and humidity were oppressive, which normally doesn’t bother me much. While on a Temple University campus tour however, it was beginning to annoy me a bit. The University exceeded my expectations by the way; I found it a lot nicer than I had imagined. You do pass through a slightly questionable part of town to get to campus, but once there, there is really no reason to leave, and they provide transport downtown regularly.

Anyway, we saw the art museum today as well, a rather unremarkable affair but for the special exhibit on Renoir, which itself was simply a large collection of vaguely familiar looking paintings. Nothing especially famous except for Picasso’s Sunflowers. We rounded off the night with some cheese steaks at a place a bit outside of the city, expertly suggested by my friend, or rather his Urban Spoon app. If anything, this little foray (we return tomorrow) just makes me angry that I didn’t bring my camera, and anxious to plan another trip here, this time to do some proper touring, because there is actually more to see than I imagined.