Cultural Philly

We decided to spend our last day of vacation soaking up a little culture, so we visited Philly's massive museum of art.

The scaffolding and cranes lend the museum a certain aesthetic charm, no? I also like the George Washington statue out front. It reminds me of all the Artigas statues I saw in Uruguay. Even little Bella Union, with about two paved roads and one stoplight, had a plaza with a bronze Artigas statue in it.

This was one of my favorite pieces in the museum. It's aptly entitled "Boy with a Rooster," and it just made me laugh.

On a more serious note, this is an interesting picture of Mary Magdalene preaching in France. I don't know how historically accurate that is, but I think it's interesting that a medieval painting would show a woman preaching. Hooray for sister missionaries!

I've always been intrigued by sculpted portraits--not the idealized figures of mythological characters (though those are nice enough), but sculptures of actual people. For some reason it fascinates me to see a three-dimensional representation of someone's unique features and personality. It was fun to see this bust of Benjamin Franklin, and know that if I had met him on the street two centuries ago, this is what he would have looked like (complete with wrinkles and saggy chin).

And while we're on the subject of Philadelphia culture, what visit to Philly would be complete if we didn't sample the fabled Philly cheesesteak? Locals insist that Geno's is one of the best sources of said sandwich, so we made our pilgrimage thence. I ask you, how can your pulse not quicken as you approach an eating establishment with this much neon on its facade?

At the ordering window, we learned that one can order a cheesesteak with provologne, cheddar, or Cheez Whiz. I never dreamed I would voluntarily consume Cheez Whiz on anything, let alone a steak sandwich, but my widely-traveled brother-in-law Nate assured me that if I wanted the authentic Philly cheesesteak experience, Whiz was the way to go (the Wikipedia article linked above seems to corroborate this). I'll try just about anything once, so Cheez Whiz it was.

To my astonishment, the resulting sandwich was pretty dang good. So was the "birch beer" soda, which I think tastes essentially the same as root beer. Phillip insists there's a notable difference, though--perhaps he's more of a soda connoisseur than I.

And yes, Shelly, we tried Italian ice at one point, as well. I think my tongue is still slightly red from it. Should have gone with lemon instead of raspberry.