36 Hours In Philly

Or, Eagles fans boo their own team?

Have you ever been to an NFL game? I hadn’t until Sunday. It was pretty much what I expected, aside from hearing the home city of my team (go Eagles) vociferously boo their own team. In defense of the boos, we didn’t have a good first half. In defense of the team, it was the first few quarters of the season.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Why the hell was I in Philly?

Friends

As I’m not a venture capitalist, I’ve aged into the period of life as a Bay Area person when my friends are leaving and buying houses elsewhere. In that vein, a few sets of my favorite San Francisco people moved to Philly over the past few years including one quite recently.

Adding to the fun, a couple that Liza got to know in Providence who I also adore just moved to Philly as well. So, all of a sudden, we had six friends to go visit in the City of Vociferous Booing.

So we did what we normally don’t do, and got on a train Saturday morning for a five or six hour trot down the East Coast to Philadelphia. The city makes a good first impression if you train into town, with its main station looking like this:

Fast-forwarding a bit, we got to Ryan and Tracy’s house, played with their dog, and then shot over to Historical Philadelphia to meet up with April and Drew so that we could visit the Liberty Bell:

And an old street:

It was all pretty damn good fun. We also got to bop around more residential Philly, which of course required coffee and benches:

More from the city:

That night we got together as an eight and ate far too much food at Suraya, which was a good place to nosh. Can recommend.

Sunday

Sunday was much like Saturday in and around Fishtown, the neighborhood where we were staying. Coffee, dogs, walking, talking. I liked Philly quite a lot, frankly. It turns out that just because I would rather consume shattered glass for supper than live in New York City doesn’t mean that there aren’t gems on the East Coast that would be super livable. (I hated the idea of Providence until I moved there, etc.)

But Sunday was all about one thing, namely football. So we got ourselves into the proper gear and shot south to The Linc. This is it from a distance:

And here’s a closer look at the stadium:

Look at this thing:

We looked good, I think:

I wonder how much the US government paid for this ceremony and flyover?

Good times:

And then we fought like hell to get back to Fishtown, packed up, went back to the station, and trained through the evening into the morning. I got to bed at about 2 am on Monday morning, which mostly worked out.

All told it’s good to go and do new things, even if you are tired. I’m writing that down as a reminder to myself. I presume you’re already smart enough to know it.

One more thanks to R and T for hosting us, D and A and M and B for spending time with Liza and me. What a good, full weekend.