Archive for September, 2009

I have returned from my weekend trip to Philadelphia. As mentioned earlier, my friends and I had been planning on heading south to see Porcupine Tree in concert at the Electric Factory in downtown Philadelphia.

Philadelpha

There was a slight hitch in plans though, as Jay who got hit with a stomach bug earlier in the week was still feeling horrible Saturday morning, so Wassy and I were on our own for the trip.

Things started off uneventfully. We decided not to take the Pennsylvania turnpike down because of the potential for horrible construction, but we hit our fair share on the way anyway. One section of road was closed for about 4 miles with people who seemed to let random amounts of cars through the one available lane. And then as soon as we hit pennsylvania, it was construction galore. The runner up to most annoying construction zone was through Quakertown where they had a major road reconstruction project going on. It was slow going for us, but the other land was totally stopped for miles. We decided at that point to take the Turnpike back and avoid the horribleness.

The most annoying though was about a mile away from the hotel. They had set up cones closing off (for reasons totally unknown) the left lanes of a 4 lane (2 in each direction with a turning lane) road. This caused the last mile of our drive to the hotel to take roughly 10-15 minutes. And then as soon as we got into the hotel, they took the cones down! Jerks!

After that began the search for dinner. We had planned on hitting one of the Olive Gardens in the area, but we had some difficulty with this plan. The first one as plotted by my GPS didn’t exist. The second one existed but was totally full with no parking anywhere in the parking lot. The third one was also totally full with no parking, so we settled on Papa Johns pizza.

Then we made our way out to the venue. I had to game the GPS a bit to prevent it from making us drive straight through downtown Philly. And thankfully, Wassy and Jay had just gone on a trip down there for a wedding and knew about the evilness that is the Roosevelt Boulevard. If you are unaware of this road, I will direct you to this visual aid. Take a normal road with 6 lanes in each direction and then split it into 4 roads with 3 lanes each. In between each of the roads going the same direction, add some little merge lanes so you can go between the sections. If you need to turn right you need to be in the outside set of roads. If you need to turn left you need to be on the inside set. And if you’re in the wrong set of roads and you miss the merge lane to get you to the right set, you’re in trouble. So thankfully, Wassy was around to make sure I was on the correct road as the GPS doesn’t understand this setup at all.

We got to the venue without too much trouble, aside from having to park way the heck away in the event parking lot. Parking was only $10 though…I was thinking it would be more. The venue was pretty cool. Looked like something to come out of Guitar Hero actually. It’s a converted Electric Factory (hence the name of the venue) with some animations of machinery on the wall and 2 full bars on the upper and lower right hand side of the room as you face the stage. Pretty cool vibe, but it’s unfun being packed in like sardines on the floor.

The show itself was pretty cool. We watched King’s X and the first half of Porcupine Tree’s set from the back of the floor and then after we got tired of getting crushed by people trying to squeeze into places where they can’t possibly fit, we moved upstairs and listened to the rest of the show from the bar while watching on the video screens they had set up. PT’s second set was really cool and had a lot of treats, including Strip The Soul into .3. They had some sound issues in the second set, but nothing too bad. Trains in the encore was also really cool with everyone clapping in time and singing along. Overall, I wouldn’t mind going back there to see a show, as long as I didn’t mind not actually seeing the band all the time.

The drive back was abysmal. It was raining…at night…on unfamiliar roads…unfamiliar 4 lane highways…with lots of traffic. We somehow managed to make it back to the hotel ok though, and after Wassy scared the crap out of me (She was sitting over by the window after I came out of the bathroom into the dark room. I thought she was in bed, but she wasn’t. Once I got over to my bed she said quietly “It’s awfully dark in here…” and it freaked me the heck out).

The next morning I got up before her and went down to the hotel lobby to plan our route to the Philadelphia Museum Of Art. Wassy wanted to go to complete a couple of school requirements, as well as to look around at their collection. So I figured out the best way to get there and wandered back up where I was informed that the roads in the area of the museum were going to be closed due to a charity run/walk. Daaaaaahhh!!!!!

Philadelpha Museum Of Art

I managed to find an alternate route and we left expecting horrible traffic in our future, but we were able to make it to the museum parking garage without any problems at all. The first thing we did was walk around to the front of the museum where the famous steps are that Rocky ran up in the movie.

Being a tourist, I had to grab a picture of the stairs since I was right there…but I declined to do the whole “Run up the steps and celebrate once you reach the top thing”. Much too tourist-y for me. Plus there’s an awful lot of steps and it was very slippery out.

Thankfully, not 30 seconds after we arrived at the steps we were graced by the presence of not one, but two individuals making the famous run. Or trying to. One of the guys had to stop to catch his breath halfway through. But the first guy made it, allowing me to snap this picture:

He’s the guy in the middle with his arms raised. The guy on the right hand side is also running up. You can click on it and see the original size in Flickr for a better view. Every single time we looked out a window at the front of the museum, there were people making the run up.

French Cloister

The museum itself was REALLY cool. This was my first time there and I didn’t realize that they had more archetectual installations than actual art. Entire columns from old temples and churches (even the entire front of a church). They also had a bunch of recreated rooms, like a chinese study and an old kitchen. The coolest two was a French Cloister (pictured above) and a Japanese tea house sitting in a garden.

Celestial Woman

One of the coolest things though was the HUGE collection of Indian art and artifacts. The exhibition that Wassy used for her assignment was particularly cool. Ragas and Rajas: Musical Imagery of Courtly India. You can read more about it there but I’ll briefly summarize. It’s an exhibition of works that went hand in hand with the music of the court of India’s rulers. The pieces were amazing, very vivid colors and amazing detail with a style that looked a lot like it came from ancient egypt…except they were mostly painted in the 1600-1700s. And accompanying the exhibit was the music. It was extremely neat.

They also had a bunch of other artifacts from India and Nepal on display, including a Buddha statue that had about 40 hands, all giving the metal hand sign (throwing up the horns as it were). Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of a lot of stuff since I was too busy looking at it all. What I did take is in my Flickr photoset. We enjoyed the museum so much that we skipped out on going to the bakery we had planned on visiting and picking up some butter cake from.

So when we were done with the museum, we started the trip home, with a pitstop at an Olive Garden in Binghamton. This time it existed and it wasn’t busy, so we finally got our never ending pasta bowls. But we could really only eat one, so they ended pretty quickly.

But the drive back, in the Philly area was all about traffic and construction again. I-76 out of the city was packed and slow moving in places and the turnpike was also packed for quite a while. Oh yeah, the best invention of all time in highway toll roads is the EZ-Pass express lanes. No need to even go through the tollbooths or slow down. Awesome. Although speaking of EZ Pass, I’m afraid to look at my statement to see how much all of this cost me…

Once we got sufficently north of Philadelphia, the traffic thinned out and the driving was a lot easier. We started to wonder if we were going the wrong direction though because every time there was a construction zone, the way we were going, north, would be clear but the way south was backed up for miles with cars trying to make the merges. Strange.

Despite the heavy rain at night making it nearly impossible for me to see much in the way of lane markers on the roads and the guy who thought he would just make a left hand turn in front of me across my path of travel at an intersection that would have caused a pretty nasty accident had I not seen him, we arrive back at the apartment around 8pm. Just in time to unpack and get settled in for sleeping.

It was a fun trip, although I’m sad that Jay wasn’t able to come with us. I really want to go back to check out the rest of the art museum as we only had time to view about half of the main building. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it back down there again soonish.