Phila-brotherly love

I am updating this portal after quite a while now....it's nearly an year that I was away from it...got a job in Philadlephia, so relocated to the city of brotherly love (Greek:-"brotherly love" from philos "loving" and adelphos "brother")in Jan last week. Heard a lot about this city and was planning to explore it since the day I am here, but the sad part is, because of work i haven't spend more than 5 weekends in this damn place. After being here been to BOSTON thrice, New Jersey once, Marlyand thrice (Baltimore twice and Ocean city once), Chicago once (for a week), California (a lot about this in the next post) and Dallas once, St.louis (once), upstate New York once and Washington D.C. once. Because of this crazy scehdule though I was in this city for the 5 weekends, used that time as a breather and cool off period. Fortunaltely today I got to see the city more closely.

Dropped my friend at 3oth street station and the next bus to King of Prussia was half hour later,. The best way of killing time is always reading, talking to people or sight seeing, I am good at the third once as compared to the other too. So thought of walking down the Market street till the City hall (Market and 15th street intersection). City hall, a victorian construction which has Bronze statue of Willaim Penn atop it's tower, is a very nice place to start the tour because you can see this construction, from any street of the city and you can orient yourself accordingly. This city has many old cathedrals, churches science and art institutes. It's nice to start at Benjamin Franklin Parkway (that starts from City hall and then ends at the Art Museum of Philadelphia). From City hall you can cover the Masonic Temple, J. K. Kennedy sqaure, Logan square, Franklin institute of science (http://www2.fi.edu/) and then finally the art museum. I don't know much about the city, yet. But there is a city tour shuttle service that runs every weekend, which can provide more information about the historical evidence of this structures. Most of the construction looks victorian (30 th street station is one of them). Actually I will call this a major area where you can experience the city's uniqueness to it's best. I still haven't seen the some places of historic significance such as liberty bell.

The Philadelphia downtown has the high rises as well as contruction of historic significance, science and art museums and beautiful fountains and green spots. So it's not totally a concrete construction all around like new york and nor just the place of historic significance like Washington D.C. This city has both the ancient and modern blends in it. When it comes to cleanliness it's not comparable to the clean Chicago at all. One of the advantage of this is city is it's transportation system, which makes it easily acessible from it's suburbs. There are two big universitsites such as UPENN and Drexel on the west end i.e. down to 4oth street from 3oth street. Upenn is very old and an Ivy league university and offers courses in varied fields. It's management school Wharton is once of the best B schools. As I said earlier commute is pretty easy in and around downtown, so one can plan taking further education when working fulltime in the downtonwn. Based on these advantages I think it's not the best but still a better city to live in.