the Delaware/Pennsylvania Trip

Yes, the lay-out of this post sucks, but I'm too tired to battle blogger over it. Sorry folks.

Last weekend I went to visit my second cousin Adriana who lives in Delaware, as my Brazilian cousin Silvia was visiting her too. (Why yes, we are quite the jet set family, or so it appears)

As Delaware is really close to Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, where a lot of Amish people live, we decided to take a drive around that area. We didn't let the dismal weather hold us back and enjoyed the sight of the green rolling hills with farms dotted here and there from the dry warmth of the car.




As soon as you enter the area around Lancaster County, horses & buggies show up on the road, as Amish people aren't allowed to drive cars (they're apparently allowed to ride in them, so long as they don't drive them).



Only recently were the Amish 'forced' to put a reflective triangle and blinkers on their buggy to improve the visibility on the roads. Apparently there used to be a lot of accidents with buggies, especially at night, and obviously these buggies don't have seatbelts, so a collision with a car coming at a much higher speed is likely to be fatal.

If anything, our trip was a thorough exercise in taking photos from within a moving car with drop of water on the windshield. Less than perfect circumstances for a photographer, but the wind and the rain were starting to pick up so pulling over to go outside for a picture became a less and less appealing option as the day progressed.

The landscape is really beautiful, and sometimes reminded me of Flanders. That is, until a sign like this shows up on someone's fence.

For lunch we stopped at a little town called - brace yourselves - Intercourse. Seriously. Intercourse, PA. Apparently this little village was built at an intersection of roads back in the day when the word for intersection was intercourse, and, well, they never got round to changing the name, I guess.

We helped the local economy of Intercourse by going on a teeny weeny shopping spree in the local quilt shop. I bought a fantastic thing called a quillow: it's a pillow, with a quilt folded into it. It's beautiful, and it's brilliant. Just because it's Amish country doesn't mean there's no interesting innovation going on.

My quillow just has an innocent pattern, but apparently around these parts you can get pretty much anything embroidered on a piece of cloth. Or maybe these banners are vintage, who knows.

Another thing Lancaster County is known for are the covered bridges. Apparently they covered them to prevent snow from freezing over on the bridge. Smart people, these Amish.

Our last stop of the day was at a dairy farm that has the most amazing ice cream.

Just look at the flavors... there's one called motor oil, that involved gummy worms, if I remember correctly. I got a scoop of rocky road (chocolate ice cream with marshmallow!) and of chocolate chip cookie dough (that's pretty self explanatory, I suppose).

As the weather wasn't exactly fit for eating our ice cream outside at the ice cream shack, we took our little dairy treasures home.

We had planned to go out for dinner, but as the wind was picking up into a full-blown storm we decided to stay in. (This same weekend extreme weather and tornadoes claimed 44 lives all over the Midwest and the South.) Silvia and I prepared a creative pasta with the ingredients in the house.

The next day was sunny and bright like nothing'd ever happened. We left Adriana's house in the morning for an excursion to Philadelphia.

The cherry blossoms are about to come out, but not just yet.

The Philadelphia skyline appearing in the distance from the viaduct by the Delaware river.

Philadelphia has many large murals on sides of buildings, such as the example below.

Our first stop was the Museum of Fine Arts. Seems like they had an interesting exhibition going on.

From atop the steps to the museum you have a beautiful view of the skyline of Philly.

And these are the steps that Sylvester Stallone once ascended in the movie Rocky. I saw more than one person jogging up the steps too.

There's a statue of Rocky at the bottom, and a line of people in front of it to take a picture with it.

One thing that amazes me about America is how much everything is exactly like the movies. I though stuff in movies would be made to look prettier than in reality. But take this yellow school bus: isn't it exactly like the school bus in the Simpsons? I find it amazing.

I've seen variations of this statue appear in many places, but apparently this is the original 'Love' statue (although wikipedia says the original is in Indiana).

We parked in a beautiful neighborhood in the old city, just south of the stretch where the Liberty Bell is. The neighborhood reminded me of Dutch cities with its more or less uniform brick houses and beautiful streets lined with trees.

Independence hall, where both the declaration of independence and the constitution where debated and adopted, is currently being restored, but the scaffolding nevertheless gives an idea of what the tower looks like.

Across from Independence Hall is the National Constitution Center, a museum dedicated to the constitution that famously starts with 'We, the People'. It's interesting to visit if you're ever in Philadelphia, it explains a lot about the origins of the constitution and the ambiguities that were amended over the years.

Afterwards, we walked along South Street, which reminded me of Little Five Points in Atlanta in terms of atmosphere.

We were in search of the atelier of the guy who makes these mosaic murals.

On our way there, we came across this delightful little truck. Doesn't it look like a dwarf version of a grown up truck?

We finally located the atelier, which is covered in mosaic made from broken china, mirrors, bottles, and, well, pretty much anything else.

On our way back we also passed a few of the painted murals Philadelphia is known for.

All in all, Philadelphia seems like a colorful city with a nice, somewhat European atmosphere and lots to discover. I'd love to get to know it better some day, but alas, in the late afternoon I had to get to the airport to fly back to Atlanta. In any case, I had a great weekend with my two cousins!

So long, Philly!