Day 4 | Magic Gardens and Faux Thanksgiving
The valet guy this morning, remembering Angus, let him negotiate his own way out of the carpark – quite a connection growing between them.
We met up with Rebekah, Mary and Ariel to check out the Magical Garden – the mosaic artworks spreading over a couple of properties in South Philadelphia. Parking is a bit crazy around here but a bit of parallel parking and a pay and display got us a couple of hours for five dollars.
The artwork was packed on every surface and nooks and crannies more a folksie glue-it-all-together with oddments, tiles and mirrors packed into the rendering or assembled into their own walls and towers. Some of the tiles are made and others reused while being interspersed with terra cotta pottery, bottles and so on. Pretty spectacular. The artist – who still lives in the area at almost 80, has a bit of a following in the hippy, Instagram world. Lots of the art presented has a bit of the permissive style – tits and bums, etc. Outside it seems to creep along the neighbouring buildings in patches.
We picked up a bit of lunch at the Whole Foods, $9 a pound buffet of delights – pork spare ribs were delicious. The checkout guy picked up on the accent and asked where we were from and told us he spent some time in Queensland and still had an American friend living down in Byron, he thought. Small world.
Parked up eating, Angus stalked off looking for coffee and settled on an Italian bakery where they needed someone to be fetched to speak English. Little did they know that is barely what we speak. Still the coffee was awesome – double espresso – as much caffeine as all previous coffees he’d had here combined!
We returned to the hotel through some of the more picturesque inner city housing to get a few things we’d got for Thanksgiving. Some of the homes were so pretty with the dappled autumn street trees and the remnants of Halloween decorations still around.
Made our way over to their Airbnb in Lower Moyamensing. Just one of the odd suburb names – others include Wissinoming, Forgotten Bottom and Pussyunk. On arrival we set to the preparation of the Thanksgiving meal. Stand out components include the cranberry relish, clover leaf rolls (from scratch complete with rising etc), couple of potato sides and pies (pecan and pumpkin from scratch). Our cultural addition was a NZ roast lamb (mint jelly) and a sour cream potato salad. While all this was going on McKay decided he wanted to get to a Best Buy (electronics shop like JB’s). Angus and O’Regan joined him and a short distance up the road turned into an hour long slog, then returning via the Ikea branch next door. Even early in the afternoon it was getting below 5 degC. It was interesting wandering around the close streets of attached housing, just a few reluctant dog-walkers scurrying about. Certainly a different kind of life.
In their absence Ariel and Jemmz were able to get in an episode of the new Doctor Who as preparations were complete. Thanksgiving blessing reminded us that we’ve all got something to be thankful for including these friends and this food.
Making plans for the parade tomorrow we learnt that the forecast is for the coldest parade in a century. This promises to an epic event.
Highlights:
Angus | Thanksgiving – even on our wander we got hollered “Hey! Happy Thanksgiving!”
Rosie | Sharing a real American Thanksgiving including the preparation
Jemmz | Rolling the clover leaf rolls
McKay | The Best Buy walk
O’Regan | Real Ginger Beer from Whole Foods and the Apple Cider from Ikea
