Saturday 26 March

We meet up with Brendan, a colleague from the (Sydney) Opera House who has just started a new job with the Australian Consulate General in New York at Public Diplomacy Officer.  We have drinks in his temporary apartment on the upper east side, on the 34^th floor with a stunning view uptown.  A couple of drinks and then out to a nearby Italian eatery. We had forgotten the controversy surrounding the appointment of the current Consul General, appointed by new PM Tony Abbott, usurping the appointee Steve Bracks who was due to move his family to New York two weeks later.  A shocking, and cruel, reversal for the Bracks family, whose kids were booked into NY schools and whose Melbourne house had been rented out for 4 years.  Anyway, Brendan’s new boss is……Nick Minchin.  Remember now?

An early night because we have an early train to catch tomorrow.  Philadephia has been on our bucket list for a while now, and this is our opportunity.

Sunday 27 March

We catch the 8am express train to Philly from Penn Station.  An easy 1 ¼ hour ride has us at our hotel near Rittenhouse Square by 10am, and they even have a room ready for us.  We dump our little overnight bag and head straight out on foot to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and their incredible collection.  It’s an imposing building with an internationally renowned collection.  The current exhibition is POP, which we trail through with some ambivalence.  Neither of us is really widely attracted to much of the ‘pop’ art culture, with the exception of the works of Andy Warhol, who is becoming a regular of ours on this trip

We walk around the large permanent collection and see many treasures, including these pieces – some familiar, some not – by van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Degas, Monet

 

 

and this 13 foot high statue of Diana

Outside, a curious queue for a photo with Rocky.  Surprisingly, perhaps, you will not see us in this queue.

 Philly is a very pretty city with lots of public spaces which have interesting features

 

 

Leaving the Museum of Art we walk along Benjamin Franklin Drive to the Rodin Museum.  Who’d have thought it?

This museum houses the greatest collection of sculpture by Auguste Rodin outside of Paris.  Mind blowing stuff

 

 

As if that isn’t enough art for one day, we overload more on the Barnes Collection.  Albert Barnes was a German medical doctor and pharmacologist who married the daughter of a wealthy Brooklyn family who he met during a 5 year stint working for a chemical company in Philadelphia.  He went on to set up a pharmaceutical manufacturing company and made a fortune, and sold his company just months before the 1929 crash, so become a full time art collector.  This incredible collection is housed in a stunning purpose built modern building

and contains a breathtaking array of works.  Literally hundreds of works from Renoir, Cezanne, Matissse, Picasso, van Gogh and more….many more. No photos allowed so none here. But, suffice to say, we were overcome with art by the end of Sunday.  And so to bed.

Monday 28 March

Today we head to the other end of town, to the Old City where we get a good dose of American political history.  We visit the National Constitution Centre for a really interesting lesson, in exhibition form, of the political process for a would-be president.  There’s much about the US constitution and the declaration of indpendence, which we found interesting, and a terrific room called ‘Signers Hall’ with life size bronze statues of the 42 men who signed the declaration of independence.

We could have spent hours here, but time didn’t allow. So we moved on and around this Old City

 

 Walked past the building housing the Liberty Bell, which had a block long queue outside it and we chose not to do queues if we can help it. The Liberty Bell holds great allure to citizens of the US, even though it pre-dates independence by many years.  It is the inscription on the bell which inspires – “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof”, a quote from Leviticus.  To add insult, the bell (which was forged in Britain) cracked the first time it was struck! It now hangs in Liberty Hall, crack and all, for everyone (well, not everyone…not us) to draw upon.

It’s a pretty building though

 

We visited the Macy’s Spring Flower Show

 

and departed Philly on the 6.32pm train back to New York.

Needed another day in Philadelphia as there is so much we didn’t see. Ah well, better a little than nothing at all.