AFTER THIS WEATHER UPDATE . . . PHILADELPHIA! (Cheri)

Well, we haven't received any mail in 10 days, and Amazon showed up for the first time in as long just yesterday.

We live in the county, but the two closest cities had eight and 11" of snow this last weekend.  No need for the lounge chairs; even the fire pit is going unused.

Today's warning is about black ice, from snow melting onto last week's ice base, so I definitely have time to post about past travel!

In September we met my sister in Philadelphia.  You may remember the post on murals that I wrote then.

​I wish I had more good pictures of the very old alley-width historical street that we explored:

I love architecture, but got very few good pictures of Philadelphia's fascinating early buildings, because there's rarely any way to back up far enough.  I thought that I would link to a YouTube drone video, but didn't find any by people who are as into architecture as I am.

Philadelphia seems to very good about documenting its history with plaques.  These were two that I was happy, but somewhat surprised to see:

You would think that the AIDS Library would have been near this sign, but I didn't see it.  If I had seen it, I would definitely have gone inside.

We did go into the library of the Historical Society of Philadelphia.

They had an interesting exhibit about various aspects of Black American history, but it was mainly a lot of documents, so doesn't translate well into a blog post.

The Museum had some doors that I frankly coveted!  At first glance you think that you are time-traveling, or seeing a re-enactment of a hundred-year-old scene inside, but somehow the images are a part of the windows themselves.

We almost missed this map in a side hall:

but a sideways glance convinced me that it was probably a Works Progress Administration piece, and yes, it was!  So many of those iconic pieces are consistent in style.

We also went to The Barnes Foundation, which exhibits its works in a very unusual fashion.  There are no placards to identify or explain the art, as the founder, Dr. Albert C. Barnes, wanted people to discern relationships between items without prompting.

I was primarily interested in the Foundation's very large collection of Impressionist paintings, including these:

I'm easy to please; even the frames excited me!

By the time he died, Barnes owned 181 paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir alone.

We thought that we were sharp-eyed:  "Didn't we see that girl in another one of his paintings?"

​Not so sharp, after all.  First, the child was Renoir's son, Jean, although our mistake was understandable, because Renoir did not allow his son to cut his hair until he was possibly 15 years old.  Second, Renoir included his son in about 60 of his paintings.

We had planned to travel through the Delmarva Peninsula, which incorporates portions of the states of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, on our way home from Philadelphia.  I'd never heard of it and was greatly anticipating that part of our trip, but my sister caught COVID in Philadelphia and we had been spending time with her, so ended up driving home through five states and the District of Columbia in one day, to avoid exposing anyone else.

The Peninsula will be our destination on another trip.