Photography: Fairmount Water Works and Philadelphia Museum of Art

A friend of mine is a grade school teacher. She had last week off for the mid-Winter break, and she didn’t have much planned. She texted me early last week and suggested a trip to Philadelphia for like a day or two. I hadn’t left the New York area since November 2019 — when I was in Montreal to cover that year’s M for Montreal — and I had been itching to go somewhere. 

A few things helped to make the trip possible:

• COVID infection numbers have been on a rapid decline over the past month. If I were asked about hitting the road in January, I would have declined. 
• We were only planning to be out of town for about a day or two. (I had to be back in New York because my mom and I had tickets to see Hasan Minhaj at Radio City Music Hall.)
• I know Center City Philly fairly well. I had been to Philly a handful of times over the past decade — mainly for business trips tied into a day job. But I was also in Philly once for The Roots Picnic. 

Our first full day in town was very busy: While eating breakfast, my friend asked me what I wanted to do. The first thing I said was that I wanted to see was John Coltrane‘s house in North Philly.  We then googled “Instagramamble Philly,” which gave us a lot of great ideas for photos — including the Fountain Street Steps in Manayunk, a small town-like neighborhood in Northwest Philly, Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens on South Street and we made a stop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (which happened to be closed that day) and the Fairmount Water Works.