In which Roz and Layla finish our Burma holiday in Philadelphia

By Roz

We once famously did a holiday (from London) that involved going to Georgia, Ukraine and Lisbon (diverting from an excess of rain in the initial country, whose main charms were outdoors). This has prompted me to think a little more outside the box when it comes to holiday planning/alterations and so it was that it made total sense to suggest to Layla as we cycled through the hills of Burma that we leave Burma a couple of days early and head from there to Philadelphia for the last leg of our holiday. It felt a little less logical when we checked in to our hotel in Philly and they asked us whether we'd had a good journey and we had to admit we had travelled for 36 hours to get there...but we did get our room upgraded to one overlooking the Liberty Bell as a result, so all's well that ends well...

Having dumped our stuff in our hotel room, we popped downstairs out of the hotel and walked just a few minutes along the road to Amada, a lovely Spanish wine bar / restaurant, which had been recommended by our friend and is one of the top restaurants in Philly. We had a delicious meal, very much enjoying the change from rice and vegetables to Spanish tortilla, a delicious salad, a beautifully cooked artichoke thing and a little wine. We lingered over our meal, having absolutely no urge to go further afield in our exploring (but also not wanting to go to bed too early) and wished this lovely place was in DC. 

We slept quite well, reveling in the crisp sheets that had been so lacking for most of our Burma holiday, though I woke up too early (5am) and only managed to hold off till 5.50 before waking Layla. This meant we were out of our hotel a little early and found ourselves arriving - throughout the day - at every venue just as it was opening. Our first stop was breakfast in the museum area at a lovely cool place called Sabrina's. Despite the early hour, it was almost half full 5 minutes after opening (and when we left there was quite a line for seats). We both had a "barking chihuahua" - a breakfast burrito which was huge and delicious - before contemplating our next step. We flirted with going to the Franklin Institute before we remembered that science museums are usually full of children, and so headed to Philadelphia's Museum of Art. We felt somewhat doubtful doing so - everyone has told us that the other art museum, the Barnes Foundation, is much better. But you need to book tickets for there well in advance and my planning enthusiasm from Burma hadn't extended quite that far. But we were quite wrong to have low expectations of the museum - it turned out to be both excellent and blissfully peaceful. We saw Van Gogh's sunflowers, lots of Miro (including a favourite of mine of a dog barking at the moon which I always wish we owned), plus some Picassos, many Monets and Manets together with some good modern art. We interrupted our visit for a sit down in the nice cafe and then struggled to stand up again... We had to admit at the end of our visit that we definitely felt knackered and my plan of walking us back into the downtown area for a little book shop browsing had been optimistic. Instead, we hailed a cab and headed back to the hotel for a glorious lunchtime nap instead of lunch (we were still full from our breakfast). A little nap turned into 2 and a quarter hours and so it was the early afternoon when we forced ourselves awake (the time difference is 12 hours!) and headed out for a coffee in a cute nearby cafe, Old Town Coffee. 

After coffee, feeling mainly revived, we walked round the corner to the cinema to see a new film called Yossi. This turned out to be an inspired choice: funny, sweet and engaging. We came out of it feeling very cheerful and then hopped on a bus into the centre of town to go to Fox Books before dinner. Clutching our literary purchases in a pleased fashion, we walked a few blocks to get to our dining destination: Sbraga. The chef is apparently famous (from TV) and the restaurant was full throughout the evening. We had four delicious courses (a really excellent salad, then an Asian eggplant dish for me and gnocchi for Layla, then a polenta dish and finally a sort of lemon meringue tart for me and rice pudding for Layla). At the end of our meal we got chatting to our neighbours, who were a very nice older couple, and we swopped restaurant recommendations for DC and Philly in an enjoyable fashion. We then walked round the corner to Franklin Mortgage and Investment Company, which is a nice unmarked speakeasy bar where we spent the rest of the evening drinking gin. A very satisfactory day. 

We slept well though again woke early. We walked through the gay village to a different Sabrina's (having agreed  some justification - which I have now forgotten - as to why we weren't being lame in going to eat from the same menu two days in a row) where we had pancakes and omelette. Both delicious. Half way through the meal, though, I started to feel a bit green. Alas this is something that often happens to me when I travel too much and so we agreed to postpone our plan for the morning and retreat to a lovely nearby cafe (called Charterhouse Square) where I sat quietly hoping the feeling would pass. It more or less did after a while, and in the interim we both had a jolly time reading (in my case contemplating the madness of the Chris Huhne / Vicky Pryce saga) and wishing there were more nice cafes in DC. From there we headed to Philadelphia's magic garden. This turned out to be a mad place with art done with mosaics, mirrors, bits of bikes, and beer bottles. We had a jolly time there, though studiously avoided engaging with the artist, who was kicking around, for fear of saying the wrong thing ("nice art, but it's a shame that so many bicycles had to lose their wheels for it" being one example...). We then headed through town to see Rittenshaw Square, which was jolly, and then slowly headed back to our hotel, contemplating whether we could manage lunch (we couldn't) and occasionally speaking with horror of returning to work. 

We picked up our bag from the hotel, and headed to the station for an early afternoon train back to DC. On the escalator down to the platform, I found myself nearly knocked off my feet and down the escalator by a flying bag (belonging to a lady further up the escalator than us). Rattled, I told her that she shouldn't travel with a bag if she couldn't control it. Standing on the platform afterwards, Layla and I contemplated that we really shouldn't be brusque with strangers en route to DC - it's the kind of place where these things come back to bite one. And that kind of thinking, I fear, shows that we really nearly are back to real life. Ah well, it's only 11 weeks till our next trip. And Philly was fantastic.