In Philadelphia

 We were in Philadelphia from Saturday afternoon to Monday afternoon, but we did a lot of cool stuff.
On our walk to the ICA , which was only 2.5 miles from our hotel but seemed like waaay more, we spotted the Addam's family in silhouette. What?! It turns out that the Fine Arts building on that campus is named after Charles Addams. We took turns taking out photos with the cut-outs. Fun!

 We were fortunate to see Stefan Sagmeister's The Happy Show at the ICA. It was very interesting and fun. Here are gumball machines - filled with large yellow gum balls. You could take a quarter and get a gum ball from the numbered machine based on how happy you rate yourself - 1 through 10. Guess which one I chose?

 Philadelphia is a city of murals. They are so beautiful. Look closely at the bottom of the photo and you can see where this mural was located.

 This mural really surprised us. We thought the windows were real and there really was a church across the street that could be reflected in those windows. Doesn't it look real? There was no church there, only a gasoline station, and those were not windows. What a cool city to have these beautiful murals.

 We had lunch at Hummus (a restaurant) and then took off walking  2 more miles (it seemed like waaaay more) in sunny, warm temperatures to get to Eastern State Penitentiary.  This was so cool! We got there late and had only 45 minutes to spend there but we saw a lot and all of us took loads of photos. This place was so photogenic; all broken down, falling apart, dust everywhere. Some cells had art installations in them, most didn't. The doorways into the cells were so small. So claustrophobic feeling just looking into the cells.

 A file cabinet, which surely wasn't part of the furniture in the cell originally. This is typical of the crumbling nature of the structure.

 One of the areas that had been fixed up a teeny bit and had some information panels. One cell was really fancy - it had been home to Al Capone for 8 months. Check out the Penitentiary web site.

The cells were in arms that radiated out of a central area, like wheel spokes. While I enjoyed visiting and taking lots of photos, the place was not good for my health. As soon as we left it, my nose got so stuffed up. Aaagh, major allergy attack. I would like to go back again with more time to poke around. If you go, and have allergies, take some meds before hand.