Philly-ing Fine

At the beginning of October, I flew to Philadelphia to visit Mike, one of my besties, and to explore the city for the first time.

The flight from Nashville to Philly was pretty uneventful, although I had my first "funny" experience with Southwest: one of the attendants sang little songs to begin and end the flight. The second one was to the tune of Heartbreak Hotel, if memory serves. The guy who sat a seat away from me was incredibly nervous about flying. He fidgeted and shuffled his feet throughout the entire flight. Sometimes this behavior makes me nervous too, but thankfully I stayed cool as a cucumber. I just looked out the window placidly at the passing landscape.

Mike picked me up from the airport and showed me around a little on the way back to the apartment he shares with his boyfriend Charley. And WOW it's a nice apartment. Of course, I might just be saying that because I got to have my own room. :D But as I was saying, Mike drove me around the neighborhoods of Manayunk and Roxborough, and we had a late, greasy-spoon lunch at the Manayunk Diner. Dinner was decidedly more "gourmet", as Mike made one of his famous chicken pot pies from scratch. De-licious ... and possibly the main reason I made the trip in the first place.

I must digress for a moment and admit that I did something on this trip that I typically don't do when I'm on vacation - watch a bunch of T.V. I was hypnotized by Mike and Char's DVR. I watched anything and everything, from Glee to Whatever Martha! to Drop Dead Diva to Jeffery & Cole Casserole. Basically, I binge-viewed, and I'm embarrassed about it.

The next day, after crawling out of bed and making love to the coffee-maker, Mike and I headed out to explore. At my request, we visited the bizarre and fascinating Mutter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The Mutter features a large collection of medical ephemera, including the world's largest colon, the skeleton of a giant, and a tumor removed from the jaw of Grover Cleveland. Grotesque? Yes. Absolutely enthralling? Also yes. Afterward, we walked a few streets over to visit Fat Jack's Comicrypt (a really neat comic book store where we were party to an earnest (read "very loud") discussion amidst the staff regarding the merits of Supernatural's first season), Circa Antiques (a junk store absolutely jam-packed with stuff), and Sophisticated Seconds (a run-of-the-mill secondhand store with a highfalutin name). Of course, being us, we had to stop by Starbucks before heading home.

That night we had dinner at Cooper's in Manayunk. It was a nice place (that reminded me of Bosco's here in Nashville) with a very cute waitstaff, but it was exceptionally loud and although we didn't receive part of our order, we still got charged for it. We went back to the apartment for a quick drink, and then Mike and I headed out to take a taste of the Philly nightlife. We hit a bit of a snag, however, as two of the bars we were interested in visiting had recently changed names, making them difficult to locate. "Pure" had become "Voyeur" and "Bump" had become "q". The former was cavernous, stylistically designed ... and empty. The latter was colorful, loud and very, very full. Woody's, sitting basically right between the other two, was much more my speed - casual and fun without getting pretentious.

I'll post more about the trip later. This particular post has been sitting in draft form forever, so I figured I'd go ahead and publish. Check back in for the rest!