Yay Philly

[kismet09]

Home from a wonderful trip to Philadelphia that reminds of me of song lyrics - what a difference a day makes / twenty four little hours (or however it goes). Tim and I left Maryland around 10 on Saturday, ran a couple of errands and made it to Philly around 12:30. My sister's audition at U of the Arts let out early, so we swung by, grabbed them, and headed out to spend some quality time.

We ate lunch at the nodding Head Brewery - baked brie appetizer, good fries, good cheese steak, freezing cold restaurant, but we got over it once we were eating. We wandered around the Rittenhouse Square area, checking out a tea shop (yay bubble tea), and a wonderful yarn store called Rosie's Yarn Cellar. The more yarn stores I visit, the more I want to have one of my own. I loved walking around, feeling the yarns, looking through the patterns. My mother decided that she wanted to treat me to something as a Valentine's Day present, so now I'm the proud owner of three skeins of Noro Kureyon, some black novelty yarn with a rainbowy ribbon running hrough it, and a book about knitting with novelty yarns that I've had my eye on for awhile. My sister also picked up a bunch of yarn and teased me about my inability/dislike for knitting on double points.

On to the hotel for a nap, some reading, and some knitting. We were on the 21st floor of the Wyndham, and had a great view of the city. The beds also had pillowtop mattresses, so the hotel gets a thumbs up from me. We went out for dinner at a bar/restaurant called Knave of Hearts. I picked it for its chilled strawberry soup, which sounded really cool, and of course they were sold out. The food was good (I ended up with a salad and some chicken satay), but the service was on the unsatisfactory side (wine took forever to arrive, as did water, as did bread, and pretty much every other part of the meal). I was too impatient to stick around for the desserts, so we ended up having giant servings of creme brulee and chocolate cake back at the hotel.

Made up for the lack of strawberry soup by having brunch this morning at Cuba Libré, which featured lots of fresh, tropical fruits and juices (we had a sampler of 5 fancy juices - yum). Breakfast service was fabulous, the decor was cool, and the food filling and good, so that made up for the less-than-great dinner experience. We wandered around in the rain a bit, checking out the Italian Market area, a used bookstore, a spice shop where we replenished our peppercorn supply, and then dropped off the mom and sister at the airport and headed back.


Maryland is in the process of thawing, and the dogs are outside remembering what it's like to walk on grass instead of snow. My replacement knitting needles from joann.com arrived (they sent me a package of one needle instead of two), so now I have three size 10 bamboo needles - whee. I can't believe it's almost 5 already! have to make a trip to the grocery store, as I am all out of popcorn, and that's unacceptable.