Pennsylvania by bus

We left Philadelphia on a gloomy morning, making everything look extra dramatic.

When the rain actually came in, at times is was pouring down so hard, with so much running water on the streets, that it seemed a little dangerous. That had a tendency to blur the shots, however, so I do not have any photos that accurately convey it.

 

The scenery was still very pretty. One thing I will mention in Easton is the Canal Museum, and its presence made sense because there had been a canal running along most of our path there.

I have seen some debate online about whether Philadelphia is friendly or not. One resident described it as provincial, meaning that residents are friendly to each other but not so much with outsiders. As our trip mainly involved tourist and service industry employees, everyone was nice to us.

Our first bus driver was especially nice. He was telling us that he had rejected a couple of the buses that they tried to give him, because of cleanliness, lack of seat belts, or heat. That could have been him buttering us up, but also we heard him chatting with another passenger, a young man going off to college, and I think he was really nice.
 

It was also at the bus station that I had my friendliest exchange with someone who was not being paid to be nice to me, visiting with a woman in the restroom, but I don't know if she was actually from Philadelphia. Maybe.

Mainly, it was fascinating seeing just how small some of the areas served could be.

I have ridden Greyhound between Portland and Eugene and Portland and Seattle, and every stop we have made has been in a town with a full bus depot. We stopped at one place where it was just a bus shelter like a city bus would have, and it seemed like the middle of nowhere.

Actually, we nearly missed our bus in Easton. There was a small office, but mainly people waited on the sidewalk, and there were a bunch of people out there, but no one else got onto the bus when it came, so we thought maybe it was too early too board. No, they were just taking a different bus, that would apparently also be parking by this stretch of sidewalk soon. They could have all just been early.

At the same time, it seemed like a small and out of the way town, but we were briefly next to a couple whose luggage showed they had passed through Doha, Qatar. That felt fairly exotic.

Our bus trips were comfortable and reasonably priced. There were also some surprises.

Under the Greyhound sign there was also a name and logo for Peter Pan. This is a separate bus line, but it has some joint ventures and connections with Greyhound.

There was also a sign for Greyhound's 100th anniversary. I had not realized they had been around so long. Actually, the anniversary was in 2014, but the sign was still up.

Happy anniversary, Greyhound!

https://www.greyhound.com/

http://peterpanbus.com/

The rest of the trip

No, this isn't the end of my writing about the trip, but there were a few common bonds in what we experienced outside of Philadelphia, and actually a lot of this includes Langhorne, where we were before.

I thought about calling it the rest of Pennsylvania, but there was a lot of Pennsylvania that we didn't see, and some of this was true about where we went in Minnesota as well.

We took auto transportation from the airport to Langhorne and back to Philadelphia, but then we went by bus to Easton and Hershey. Hershey did not have a Greyhound station, so we went to Harrisburg and took a taxi to Hershey, then back to Harrisburg for our flight to Minneapolis. We taxied to our hotel in Bloomington, and took their airport shuttle back for our return trip.

Philadelphia and Bloomington were the only hotels where they did not ask for our license plate number. There was such a strong assumption that we would have cars that they did not even bother asking.

This makes sense, because none of these locations were built for pedestrians, so people who want to get around once they are there are likely to need cars. Actually, even Bloomington was not built for walking at all, but there are more shuttle options, and visitors can get by without a car because of that.

That seems like it would increase the need for taxis, but because so many people own or rent cars, that appears to be the opposite. There are still taxis, but they are often private operations, with less of a sense of professionalism, though they were generally still friendly.

We did not expect to find so many amusement parks everywhere. We knew about Sesame Place, Hershey Park, and the Nickelodeon park in the Mall of America, but on our bus trips we kept seeing other collections of roller coasters and slides. Given how seasonal these attractions can be, especially with East Coast winters, we were amazed. In Oregon we have Oaks Park and the Enchanted Forest, and it just seems different. That was interesting to see.

Being around at the start of football season, it was interesting to trace team loyalty via doughnuts. There would be a football doughnut everywhere, and if there wasn't a pro team for that city it would be a college team.

The worse piece of savagery that we saw in these wild areas happened in Easton. We got McDonalds for breakfast, and the English muffins for our sandwiches were not toasted. Fortunately this was on our way out of town, and that helped to calm the despair. I'd hate to just decide people were barbarians based on that, but come on!

Philadelphia - Residence Inn, Philadelphia Center City

http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/phlri-residence-inn-philadelphia-center-city/

We stayed in two really good hotels, and three that were not so good on the trip, but our Philadelphia hotel was the best, with Bloomington a close second.

This was a Residence Inn, and the doors really did look like entrances into homes.

The rooms were fine, and that's not really something we are picky about, but there were a few things that are really worth mentioning.

Location:  Kitty corner from City Hall and adjacent to the Wanamaker Building, the Residence Inn is conveniently located for tourist purposes, close to many locations and with easy access to transportation for things that are farther away. This helped us use our time productively. In addition, the 7-11 and Dunkin Donuts that were right there were also pretty convenient.

One possibly drawback to the location - and this is minor - is that appears that the address was changed recently, so not all navigation aids recognize the One East Penn Square address. Our cab driver had some difficulty finding it, and the existence of another Marriott very nearby did not help. Nonetheless, we did get there, and we liked it.

The Breakfast Buffet: We love when breakfast is included with the stay, as something that saves time and money. Usually the spreads aren't that great, but because of the convenience you don't care.

Their breakfast buffet was so good! It had hot and cold items, with several choices, including some basics that were there every day and other items that were new and surprising. All of this was wonderful, but what really clinched it for my Diet Coke dependent sisters was that there were fountain drinks available too.

There were also several people there to help you, without being obtrusive, and this leads to the next factor.

The Staff: All of the staff was so friendly, thoughtful, and helpful. Whether it was getting change for the laundry or not being able to figure out the remote control for the television, this was easily the most attentive and pleasant staff that we have ever encountered, and truly a pleasure to work with.

Even as we were leaving they were helpful. We asked about getting to the bus station, and they gave us advice that we needed and could not possibly have known. From this location, cabs don't like taking people to the bus station. It is fairly short, and they will suggest you walk. We are not against a walk, but it was early enough in the morning to still be dark, we had luggage, and we did not want to make that navigation alone and on foot. The hotel staff told us to get loaded in the cab before telling the driver where we were going, and they helped us get loaded in quickly to make it work. And then the driver did say we could walk, but it was too late!

Thank you Residence Inn, Philadelphia Center City staff! You were the best!

Philadelphia - Contradictions

I don't have any great pictures for this post. One picture is too blurry, and the others were taken from the bus. Still, I hope they will help with the thoughts.

For our first full day in Philadelphia we started with taking the bus tour once around, and then went to Independence National Historic Park.

Some of my political awareness would certainly have contributed to the thoughts that I had, but there were things that kept coming up. Here we were, in the city where so much had been planned concerning freedom, liberty, and equality, and there were still so many signs of that not having been achieved.

I believe I had just read of the PUSH bombing shortly before our trip, so when we went by Dirty Frank's, but of all the famous Franks Frank Rizzo was not allowed, well, I had some thoughts about Philadelphia policing.

Our tour guide for Independence Hall was a Black man. He was fantastic, by the way, getting introductions going by having people say where they were from and where to visit there, which got people thinking and feeling enthusiastic.

He did not talk much about some of the more obvious weak points of the Revolution, but still, it was there. I suppose you could ignore it if you wanted to.

There were also some things we saw on the bus tour that reinforced this. One was the Chinese Friendship Gate.

Here is a connection I had never made. Chinatowns were not just places where the Chinese lived because they settled in groups for social support, or even because of strict laws about where they could live. Because the laws were set up so woman could not come and families could not come, there were not the comforts of a happy family life. This led to the areas also becoming concentrations of vice, with gambling, drugs, and prostitution.

This could be convenient in two ways, because other people could go there to participate in the vice, and it would certainly make it easy to look at the people who lived there as low life deviants. Actually that characterization should be unnecessary, because it was already decided that the Chinese were undesirables except for their labor, so they could work here, but not build lives here.

There was also a statue of Tadeusz Kościuszko, a Polish military engineer and leader who fought in the Revolution, and whom they tried to reward with slaves. He refused in disgust, and left funds in his will to buy freedom for Jefferson's slaves, but the terms of the will were not honored exactly. The funds did end up establishing an institute for African Americans.

There is also a Holocaust memorial.

This was the first Holocaust memorial in North America, and it was chosen to go to Philadelphia because of Philadelphia's legacy of religious tolerance.

It is not that far from a church that had spaces that had been windows before, but were now filled in with masonry. It was a Catholic church, and the windows had been smashed often enough that they gave up. This apparently done by the nativists known as Know-Nothings.

There is a lot of good history in Philadelphia, but just like the rest of the world, there is still a long way to go.

Philadelphia - Rebel City

Philadelphia is known as the meeting place of rebels as they planned to declare their rebellion from the British Empire, though a lot of that pre-Revolutionary spirit is shared with Boston. Pennsylvania in general tended to be more welcoming to non-conformity than Massachusetts, but are there some remnants of that spirit today?

Really, this is my excuse to talk about some places we didn't go.

I did mention Swann Fountain last week in talking about the Calders. What I didn't mention is that one of the things they told us on the tour is that swimming is not allowed in Swann Fountain, and people do it anyway.

That might not have made a lasting impression, except that on the tour Swann Fountain and Love Park were pretty close together (Google Maps says it's an eight minute walk), and Love Park is popular with skateboarders even after the ban. In fact, there is a fairly famous act of civil disobedience associated with it. 

LOVE Park was designed by Edmund Bacon, father of actor Kevin Bacon, yes, but  also pretty cool in his own right, and kind of a firebrand. (See his history of being run out of Flint by big business for supporting strikers and getting federal grants, and his protest of One Liberty Place for more on that.)

LOVE Park has always been popular for skateboarding, and its design lends itself to that well, but skateboarding was banned in 1995, with increased fines and enforcement added in 2001 and discouraging renovations in 2002.

In protest, a 92-year old Edmund Bacon skated in the park.

https://vimeo.com/57981966

Okay, he needed some help, but that's better than a lot of people decades younger can do, and his end quote is awesome.

(Incidentally, they mentioned the protest and his age on the tour, and it made him seem a bit old to be Kevin Bacon's father, but he was 48 when Kevin Bacon was born, so that's how it works out.)

Sadly, the renovations are undergoing another round, with still no allowances being made for skaters, inspiring the hash tag #lastdaysoflove and #phillyhasnolove. While plans for a new skate park are mentioned, skaters feel that it's place cannot be filled.

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Last-Days-of-LOVE-Park-Philly-Remodel-Skateboarders-Squeeze-in-Last-Laps-367730531.html

Will more rebellion follow? Philly has seen worse.