The city of brotherly love

Adam and I have been taking weekend trips whenever we get the chance. We have been to Richmond, Charlottesville, Colonial Beach, Washington DC (it’s a pain to drive in the city, better to just get a hotel), Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. We haven’t been to Philadelphia in a few years and I was worried we wouldn’t find new things to do. Boy, was I wrong. We went to an outstanding art museum – Barnes Foundation, a cocktail making class, a Japanese House and Garden, and Simeone – a vintage car museum.

But lets start with the most important part of our visit, the Philly cheesesteak. I do not leave these things to chance. I did my research and one of the top cheesesteaks in the city is also known for their pizza, I must be in heaven! Angelo’s was our destination and it did not disappoint! The bread was homemade, soft and chewy. The steak was tender and juicy. I’m hungry just looking at it.

Adam’s pick was the Barnes Foundation – one of the world’s great collections of modern European paintings, with numerous works by Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh, and Modigliani. I did not do any prior research to us visiting this museum and I must say I was blown away. So many impressionist paintings! There are over 200 Renoirs alone at this museum. My new favorite artist is Henri Rousseau. I was drawn to his paintings at the Musee de Orsay in Paris. His paintings are simplistic (Wikipedia classifies his genre as naïve or primitive) and he was mocked by critics but there is something about his jungle paintings I love so I was so excited to see a few at this museum. Of course I had to highlight the Postman by Van Gogh. Gotta represent the U.S. Postal Service.

Of course we had to visit Elfreth’s Alley, the oldest continuously inhabited street in the United States. We did this on our last visit but I wanted to see it again. Can’t beat historic architecture.

One night we went to a cocktail making class. This was so much fun! The cocktails were elementary but overall pretty tasty.

We visited a racing car museum. Since we now watch Drive to Survive on Netflix and now follow Formula One we thought this would be something fun to do. The Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum is one of the world’s greatest collections of racing sports cars. Assembled over 50 years by Dr. Frederick Simeone, the Museum contains over 75 historically significant cars including Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Bugatti, Mercedes, Jaguar, Bentley, Porsche, Aston Martin, Corvette, Ford, and more. There were definitely some beautiful cars. The 1959 Ferrari 250 GT Interim Berlinetta (below) was both Adam and I’s favorite.

Here are a few more spectacular cars.

We stopped by a Japanese House and Garden. There was a demonstration going on in the house so we didn’t get photos of the inside but the real highlight was the outside gardens.

Everyone I told we were going to Philadelphia curled their noses and said, “why?!” Philly is a great city and we had so much fun. Yes, it has problems just like any large city but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.