Philly Cupcakery Boutique...

After the Liberty Bell we had a bit more of a mooch around before tea, walking back along Chestnut we found a funny little shop called the Philly Cupcakery Boutique - and as a certain someone is a big cupcake fan and is fast becoming a connoisseur, we popped in to sample their goods.

Inside, all the cupcakes were out in old fashioned dressers, with glass doors - they all looked so colourful and tasty, the frosting was piled high and they all had little decorations on the top.

We got one each to take home with us, Abi got a lemony one and I had an apple strudel flavoured one. They were good (especially the apple one), but they weren't a patch on the Crumbs cupcakes we have in New York... not that we're biased or anything!

Liberty Bell...

Later in the afternoon we went to see the Liberty Bell.

I was expecting it to be in the original tower, in an old colonial style building in a town square or something, but it wasn't quite like that. The actually bell was housed in a modern glass walled mini-museum opposite the tower that it used to be in, and the tower itself was unfortunately covered in scafolding. The little building next to it looked nice though...

There was still a queue to see the bell at 4.30pm, it's obviously one of the main tourist attractions in Philly and is a key part of the history of America. Once we got inside, it was just as busy - people were swarming around the bell...

We didn't really know that much about the bell, apart from the it had a big crack in it - but we didn't even know why it was cracked. We found out that the bell was a made by us Brits and was a gift from King George to America, the bell's actually older than the United States of America itself because it goes back to when America was part of Britain!

As for the crack, well - I was hoping there'd be a brilliant story behind it, like it was hit with a canon ball during the civil war, or that it was struck by lightning like it Back To The Future - but it's just down to weathering, extreme heat and cooling... boring really.

It was great to see it, and it's another important American monument that we've seen - next stop, Mount Rushmore!

Third and final mission - completed.

On The Walls...

There were quite a few nice bits and pieces on the walls around Philadelphia, like this massive mosaic mural...

We couldn't quite work out what it was all about, but it was pretty impressive...

It was all made up of tiny square tiles, so when you got up close it just looked like a pixelated picture...

I also really liked this positive propaganda poster...

It was on the hording outside an old bookshop, on the wall round the corner was the original painted shop signage...

I think if you're surname's Reedmor you're more or less obliged to open a book shop!

Philly Cheese Steak...

After exploring a bit, it was well past lunch-time - so it was time to find somthing to eat and there was only one thing on my mind... Cheese Steaks!

We'd done a little google search to find out where the best Philly Cheese Steaks could be found, but it seems like it's as hard as finding the best pizza in New York, everyone has their own opinion, everyone has their own recipe and all the reviews varied so much. So we tried to find one that came up a lot as being good, called Rick's Steaks... but once we found it, it was closed. Then we tried a placed called Jim's - that had closed down too... so we were quickly losing hope.

Luckily we stumbled across a greasy looking place, underneath a carpark which looked like a genuine Cheese Steak eatery and somewhere where we'd get a geniune experience... so we went into Shank's.

Inside was a little prettier than the outside, it had a proper little diner feel to it, with stainless steel counters, pepsi bar stools, pictures of reviews and celebrity endorsement all over the wall and that brushed steel stuff on the walls and table tops.

It was probably a bit of kebab house-ish place to go, but we were getting hungry and it seemed popular so we thought we'd give their cheese-steaks a go... well, I did... Abi opted for a burger.

Philly Cheese-Steaks are simply thinly sliced steak, with onions covered in cheese in a roll...

It was a lot tastier than it looks - really.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the burgers - hands down the worst burger we've experienced anywhere... so we shared the cheese steak instead.

I have to admit, it wasn't quite all I'd hoped it would be, and I'm hoping that when we go back to Philly we'll find somewhere a little different, maybe one of the other highly recommended places that were a little out of the city center.

Then again, if it's good enough for Bill Cosby, it's good enough for us!

Mission two - completed.

The Sailor Jerry's Shop...

For some reason, the only Sailor Jerry's shop in America is in downtown Philadelphia - so it was on our 'To Do' list while we were there...

It was only a little shop, but had a lot of great touches, from the wallpaper to the light fittings everything had been thought of and was on brand... it felt a bit like a shop you'd find in Disney World or something.

The Octopus chandeliers were great, and the changing room walls were lined with tattoo flash.

Recently, Sailor Jerry's has got a lot more popular and so there were some quite odd choices of objects to put their branding on, but they had some great tshirts and a lot of lovely clothes for girls (annoyingly nicer and cheaper than the mens clothing).

It was great to go and find the shop and see it in the flesh, it's a bit of a shame that the brand's becoming a bit like the Ed Hardy stuff (he was Sailor Jerry's protege turned rival in the tattoo world), but they still have some great stuff and the drink still tastes the same to me.

So, mission one - completed.

Philly...

On Saturday we had a little Bolt Bus adventure - we went to Philly!

It's only a 2 hour journey away and we got our tickets for $26 return - another Bolt Bus bargain.

We'd set ourselves 3 missions for Philly, all of which had to be completed within the 9 hours or so that we'd be there. These missions were:

1. Find the Sailor Jerry's shop
2. Try a genuine Philly Cheese Steak.
3. Find the Liberty Bell.

Once we'd arrived and refueled with Dunkin Donuts and coffee, we walked from the main (and very grand) train station into the city center. It was a BEAUTIFUL day, it was so sunny and strangely warm (24 degrees!), so we thought walking around would be far nicer than getting the subway, plus we'd see a lot more.

Philly has a much friendlier feel than Washington did, it had more of a buzz about it - although it still felt quiet in comparrison to New York - and it felt a bit more live in, Washington felt very business like.

The first thing we noticed as we walked around was how much brilliant and different architecture there was in the city...

There was such a mixture of styles and ages, from horrible concrete high-rises, to decorative town houses, colonial town halls to art deco school buildings.

We walked through the main part of town, which seemed to be down Chesnut Street and Walnut Street and the mid-teen cross streets (it was a similar layout to Manhattan). We especially liked it around 13th Street, it was full of small boutiquey shops and bars and restaurants.

Abi found a lovely shop called Verde which sold all sorts of hand-made and crafty things, screen printed tote bags, handmade jewellery, knitted hats and scarfs, flowers, chocolates... all sorts. They had some very special looking chocolates, including these fancy Philly ones...

A little further down on 13th Street was the Sailor Jerry's shop - which brings us nicely to our first mission...

Red Brolly, Yellow Brolly...

Row, Row, Row Your Boat...

As we knew then weather was going to be nice on Saturday, we planned to go and have a little row on the lake by the boathouse in the park. Unfortunately, we got a little too distracted by two-story burgers and roller discos, so by the time we got to the boathouse it was closed.

It didn't matter though, we were quite happy to walk around the lake, over the lovely white Bow Bridge across to the other side to a little nook and sit on a bench and watch everyone else on the lake.

It felt so peaceful on our bench, watching all the different rowing styles, watching the boyfriends trying to impress their girlfriends with their rowing (while the girls are texting or calling their friends), watching the fathers teaching their little boys to row, watching the husbands lying back and instructing their wives how not to row, watching the big-headed men making sure everyone else could see how fast they were at going, watching the students trying to take photos for an art project but taking too long and missing the sunlight, watching the people go round and round in circles because they just can't get co-ordinated... I wonder what people will think when we finally get to go on the lake and have a row... I wonder which category we'll fall into...?

It was such a peaceful late afternoon, it felt just like a Sunday afternoon - so it was made even more perfect knowing that we didn't have to get up early the following morning.

Central Park Roller Disco...

This weekend the weather was absolutely perfect, lovely and sunny, not too hot, not too cold... just right. So on Saturday (after our big burgers) we went up to Central Park for a stroll and a row on the lake.

The Park looked beautiful in the afternoon sunlight, the air felt really fresh and autumnal - but thre trees hadn't quite started to change colour properly yet.

As we made our way to the Boathouse we passed the Central Park Roller Disco. We'd seen it a couple of times before, but it looked especially busy on this particular afternoon, so we went over to have a look...

There was such a fantastic mixture of characters there, we didn't know where to look first.

This guy was doing laps, each time adding another bottle of water to his head, he was pretty good, we didn't see him drop any...

This lady was obvoiusly an ex-figure skater and wasn't letting the lack of ice stop her showing off her moves...

This man had gone all out and made his own skin-tight black outfit with day glow green strips attached with safety pins, he was like a disco bumble-bee...

He was fabulous!

This may look like a dance-move, but he was actually trying to regain his balance, there were a couple of occasions that the skaters narrowly avoided falling into a big heap infront of us.

This finely dressed fellow obviously got a studding machine one Christmas and decided to stud every item of clothin... including his trainers!

This impressive bicycle was parked up at the side of the disco, we're not sure who it belonged to but I'd loved to have seem them riding off into the sunset on it - looking at the pedals the rider must be nearly lying flat to work the thing...

It was so much fun watching all the characters dancing and skating around, it was a lovely mix of people from young children dancing around in the middle, to young people doing salsa moves, to middle-aged men wearing red bandanas and rollerskates, to the more mature folk showing that they've still got it.



It was all very New York.

Bloody Big Burger...

It wasn't really a surprise when the waitor automatically assumed that this mighty big 'Bold' burger was for me, but believe it or not Little Miss Turner was the proud owner of this huuuuuge treat.

I went for the slightly more modest bacon and egg burger (just the one burger in my bun), when we went for lunch at our favourite burger place, Stand Burger (which we later realised that it's actually called Stand4 Burger, but we don't like the '4' bit).

Lovely Little Vovlo...

This rather lovely little car was parked on E17th Street the other day. Sorry about the blurriness, but I was holding an umberella at the time, it was absolutely pouring with rain (as it has been on and off for the past few days).

This Morning...

Last week I started to go for a walk every (nearly) morning before work. It's a nice walk from our apartment down Myrtle Avenue to the corner Fort Greene Park and back, and at the moment I'm starting my walk just as the sun's coming up, so when I'm heading back to the apartment the sky tends to look rather beautiful...

This was this morning's sunrise. It looked far more impressive in real life, but my phone camera's not too shabby really.

It's lovely walking down the road as things begin to start stirring, there are some lovely smells coming from some streets, smells of fresh bread, and when I walk past the bagel shop it's so hard not to go in and get one (lucky I don't take any money with me).

Some schools must start pretty early because there are a lot of children up and about before 7am, maybe they've got quite a long journey or they might have a breakfast club or something... eitherway, it seems a bit early to me.

Hopefully my walks will become runs... but for now, a brisk 3 mile walk will do. It's a lovely way to start my day (as long as it's not raining).

Lazy Weekend...

We've had a bit of a lovely and lazy weekend, it's been wonderful.

Yesterday morning we went into Manhattan and got breakfast at a place called Chat n' Chew, it's right round the corner from work. Abi and I had been there before on evening and noticed their breakfast menu looked rather tasty, and has said we should go back one time... so we did.

Abi had Triple Blueberry pancakes, with blueberry's in the pancakes, blueberry's on top of the pancakes and with blueberry butter melting over the pancakes... delicious. I had eggs benedict - having had some pretty disappointing eggs benedict experiences in New York, I have to say Chat n' Chew do a mean eggs benedict (nearly a rival for Chatters... nearly).

Then we went to the cinema, at noon! I can't remember the last time I've been to the cinema in the day time - but it was great. We went to a new cinema near work (new to us, not new in general, it was pretty old in general) to see a film called Easy A.

It's funny little film, it's a bit of a teeny film (like Mean Girls) but it's still funny and Emma Stone (who was in Superbad and Zombieland) is great in it... it's also got that man who seems to be in EVERYTHING, he was in Julia and Julie and in The Devil Wears Prada, but I'm not sure what his name is... I suppose I could look it up as I'm on the internet. Hang on...
He's called Stanley Tucci, it's also got Malcolm McDowell in too.

It was good fun, and a perfect afternoon film.

(Little coincidence, we spotted these A's in the subway station on the way home)

Then today, we've done very little but relax really (and boring stuff like tidy the apartment and take stuff to the laundromat), but we did go for a wander down Myrtle Avenue. We thought we'd keep walking after dropping off our washing, so we walked up to Maggie Brown's.

Tom and I went to Maggie Brown's last summer when we were house sitting at Malvina's, and I think I'd been back a couple of times since, but Abi and I had never been together and we were craving burgers, so we went in for some lunch. It's a great little restaurant/brunch place/bar with a very friendly local atmosphere. They were playing fantastic music (Elvis and The Beatles) and their burgers were absolutely DELICIOUS! So I have a feeling we'll be heading back there.

There was a section of Myrtle Avenue that had been blocked off and pedestrianised for the day. It had been taken over by all the local children, covering the tarmac with colourful chalk drawings, hoola-hooping and riding scooters up and down, it was great. As we walked back we walked past a band setting up their instruments to play in the middle of the street, and another local bar was blasting out tunes and filling the air with delicious BBQ smells, there was a little block party kicking off.

So despite not really going very far today (just 10 blocks up the road) we've made new discoveries (including a shop that Abi's going to spend all her money in, called Barking Brown which sells some rather nice hats and boots) and experienced yet another side of Brooklyn life.

I just wish I'd taken my phone or camera to Maggie Brown's so I could have take some pictures of the goings on, but it was quite nice to just take it in... next time I'll get some photos.

I know this hasn't been the most exciting of blog posts... but we've had a brilliant weekend and I hope you all have had too.

Inside Out...

I was walking behind this character the other day, just by work. For some reason he was wearing boht his big floppy hat and his t-shirt inside out...? It reminded me of when Tom wore all his clothes back to front to school in honour of Kris Kros, it brought a smile to my face.

Little Devil...

Ian Wright, Wright, Wright...

Last night Abi and went along to the Bumble & Bumble University to listen to an illustrator called Ian Wright give a little talk. It was part of the AIGA/NY 'Small Talk' series that I went to last year when Anthony Burrill was giving a talk.

I've liked Ian Wright's since my last year at Uni when I first saw his stuff, so it was fantastic to hear him talk about the work and talk about the piece that I've got a print of, his Jimi Hendrix portrait...

He's a Londoner, in his late 50s and is a great character. He's very humble considering he's worked with and shared studio spaces with some amazing and famous designers like Neville Brody and has done some brilliant illustration work. His stuff is mainly based around music (which he said was his main love, above anything and everything else). He's now based in New York and does collaborations with different people and does work for a variety of clients, the latest being Saks of 5th Avenue.

He had some great stories about growing up and making the transition from being a student to being a professional, working for NME, growing up loving the Beatles, seeing Jimi Hendrix play on Top of the Pops, listening to the Who, having posters of Pete Townsend on his wall and then later getting to work with him on a couple of album covers. It was all great to hear and really inspiring.

He uses a lot different media to create his portraits - anything he can find really, he's made portraits out of cassette tapes, mascara brushes, scraps of paper, ink blots, toy beads... all sorts. His most recent work features badges a lot, like this album cover for Tony Bennett's Duets album...

It was an incredibly inspiring talk, in a great venue and we both left wanting to go home and start painting or making portraits out of our subway cards, it really made us think about all the creative stuff we used to do at Uni and school, and made us realise there's no reason we couldn't do it still.

I sent Ian a little email this morning, just saying thanks for the talk - I wasn't expecting a reply or anything, but I just felt compelled to write to him (trying not to sound to gushy in the message). I was incredibly surprised to later receive a reply from him saying...

Hello Ollie
You just made my day!
Thank you mate!
Warm Regards
Ian

What a nice man.

Me Too...

The Finish Line...

I made it.

I had seen from Tom's photos of his adventure into Harlem, that the top end of Central Park was rather lovely. There's a very well kept little gardens section that felt very English - it was obviously a popular place for weddings as I saw three different parties all waiting to have their photos taken.

The pond at the very top of the park felt very peaceful as the sun was beginning to set. I wish the colours came out properly in the sky, the sky was a beautiful blue - more like this...

It was such a lovely evening and great place to end my walk. It felt great to have done it, (my feet were blummin' sore though, I'd stupidly worn my Vans instead of my good trainers - I won't make that mistake again!)... I think there'll be some more walking adventures in New York before long.