Philly

I figured that I owed you all another post. I'm not the most prolific of writers, but I can do better than once a month.

Over the holidays, I went to Philadelphia for a couple days. My sister lives up about an hour north of the city, and we stopped at her place for a few days. The first day we were there, we decided to drive into Philly. "We" includes my sister, Vickie, her husband, Michael, his son (her step-son), Noah, and me and my wife, Suzanne. Michael and Vickie decided that we'd take Vickie's car, which was an old Toyota with 155,000 miles on it. So, by the time we were all finally up and ready to go, it was after noon. We were going to go have lunch at a place just off the UPenn campus, called Koch's Deli, which I had gone to a few times when I was in school.(http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/bigmap/outoftown/pennsylvania/philadelphia/west/kochs/index.htm)
Koch's has the best Deli outside of NYC.

It's a little convoluted getting into the city from Vickie's place. First, we took roads to the highway, then we got off that onto the Penn. turnpike. Because of some minor construction, there was a huge traffic jam, and we had to fight our way through bumper to bumper cars going every which way for 45 min. Finally we got past that and everything seemed to be fine. We got off the turnpike and got onto highway 76, the Schuykill expressway. As we went up a hill, the car started making a rattling noise and the check engine light came on. Michael, who was driving, didn't feel to comfortable with this, because the car was leaking oil, and, when questioned, Vickie said that she handn't been checking the oil. At mile 334 (only 10 miles from Center City, Philly) we got off on the shoulder, to check the oil. On checking it, we found that it wasn't even registering on the dipstick.
We called triple-A to have a tow truck come bring us a quart of oil. They informed us that they can't bring oil and would have to tow us. They also told us that 5 of us wouldn't fit in the truck and they'd have to leave 3 of us on the side of the road waiting for a cab. They also told us they couldn't find a cab for at least 2 1/2 hours. The tow truck wouldn't be there for at least 45 minutes. All, in all, we were waiting on the side of the road for about 1/2 hour, when we saw a tow truck go by in the other direction, then 10 min later, it pulled up behind us. It was a Penn. Department of Transit (PennDOT) truck. They just roam the highways looking for stranded cars like us. He had oil, and told us about the gas station 4 miles up the highway. We drove there, and put 4 more quarts of oil in. We were VERY lucky we didn't sieze up the engine of the car while driving before. But now we were back in business. HURAH!
Then we drove on into west Philly and went through the Penn campus. I played tour guide. We got to Koch's, and I was pleasantly surprised that the neighborhood west of campus had gotten quite a bit nicer and safer. One thing I hadn't remembered, was that Koch's had no seating, except for a little table outside. We got our delicious food (with 1 pound of meat on each hoagie) and sat outside to eat. It was great, but we were freezing. It had been rather warm, but the temp had dropped by 10 or 15 degrees. So we packed up and went down to the Penn campus and walked around. We saw the restaurant, Cerality, which we had read about years ago.
http://www.cereality.com/main.php
Cereality is awesome. They just sell cereal (hot and cold). You get a container, and you pick out 2 scoops of multiple kinds of cereal, and 2 toppings. I had corn flakes and frosted flakes, with banannas, and blueberries. Kids can get all sorts of candy and chocolate type toppings too. You can have whatever milk you want from the milk bar. They even have a spoon that has a tube through it, to drink your milk when you are done with the cereal. A straw-spoon.

After hanging out at campus for a bit, we went down to South Street. It's a cool area, very much like Greenwich Village in NYC. Among other places, we went into one of my favorite stores down there, A Garland of Letters, a new age bookstore.
http://www.southstreet.com/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,50/Itemid,40/
We had a lot of fun just walking around.

Then, we headed back, and it only took 45 minutes to drive what took us about 2 hours before.

The next day, Suzanne and I decided to take the train in. When we got back, Vickie and Michael had wasted no time. They had sold the car and bought a Chevy Equinox.