Walking Tour

Ben and I have both been traveling a lot for work recently, and on Thursday he's leaving for Australia for two weeks, so we decided to spend yesterday just wandering around Philly for the day. First, we had to mail some things.

No turning back now!

Then it was down to Penn's Landing for the annual Super Scooper All-You-Can-Eat Ice Cream Festival. Since last year I proved to myself that I could eat a scoop from all 20 vendors, this year I went with more of a "strategic savoring" approach, and only ate the flavors I actually like. That way I had room to go back for seconds of the best ones.

The cup stack is less impressive when you know that Ben and I combined ours.

After we were done with our afternoon gluttony, we walked down along the river to the Mummers Museum. I have been wanting to go there since we moved here two years ago, but had never found the time. It was basically empty and a bit run-down, but the costumes did not disappoint:

Yes, that's a fish.

So many sequins!

Lion King

Mozart?

Sweet boat

They also had the costumes from this year's winning club, which lit up:

Some of the back pieces were enormous, and can apparently weigh up to 150 pounds:

They also had costumes for you to try on. I wasn't quite feeling up to any of the jackets or capes given the heat and the lack of air conditioning, but I did enjoy this (surprisingly heavy) hat:

However, as with any tradition that goes back over a hundred years, there were some disturbing historical artifacts:

This was a giant poster.

It is really, really old school racist.

After we had finished marveling at the costumes and the historical bigotry (and some not-so-historical: women weren't allowed in the parade until 1983), we walked down along the Delaware River Trail, which is surprisingly nice for an urban trail whose entrance is behind a Walmart. Along the way, we encountered our first "Bad Wolf" siting in the wild:

I think the little guy at the bottom should have had two hearts

We finished the day at the movie theater, where we saw Brave and savored the air conditioning before the long walk home. Google maps says we walked 6 miles altogether, but I think it was probably longer given that we wandered down lots of random side streets and got turned around a few times. So, you know, that totally makes up for all the ice cream we had for lunch.