It's hot hot hot, but we decided to throw caution to the wind or the sun and hop around some places by bus and even the trolley tram.
The idea today was that even though it was going to be melting temperature we could get around avoiding most of the heat by bus, then dropping into various places either to have something to eat, drink or a station, they all have air conditioning, the trick is to try & use the real timing when it works so you arrive at the bus stop without having to long to wait.
A short walk south from the hotel took us to Lombard Street, this has to be timed right, otherwise you have a 30 or more wait for a bus, we arrived with about 5 minutes to spare, then caught the number 40 bus to South Street & 27th from there it's a ramp down onto the Schuykill River Boardwalk. This is all constructed from steel due to the water height can flood it, then freeze in the winter at which point it could crush a wooden structure. Either way, it makes a great rolling surface. We walked about a quarter of a mile along here before having to climb a set of steps up onto Walnut Street then into the Boars Head which isn't a pub. This is basically a mixture of a sandwich shop and a convenience store that I can only imagine caters for the massive office blocks around here so had a sausage and egg sandwich with orange juice. This is one of those places that you build your own sandwich on a touch screen so they only put on it what you want which saves you time picking off stuff that I'm not even sure of its name.
Above this shop is 11 floors of the car park, but at the very top is a rooftop garden, called Cira Green, complete with a bar and a large TV screen. From here you get an excellent view of the city and can see the Amtrak trains going into 30th Street Station, there was also a nice breeze up here and plenty of chairs to relax in. It's a bit manic in the city so this was a welcome relief just to get away from people for a while, Apparently, this is going to be a year-round venue and today was a Mario Kart challenge on the big screen but we wouldn't be there at 3 o'clock when 144 started racing until it was the last man standing.
Next, we walked 1 block to 30th Street Station, there are two reasons for this, the first like most city's the architecture is fantastic in these places they cared when they built this stuff. It's built, on legs so all the tracks are underneath it, most things are done online now so the old ticket offices have been turned into cafes and the like, the place is clean, pigeon & homeless free!
No aggressive begging in here.
Second is that from today they have shut the mainline from the city to the airport for a month, so it's best to work out where we need to go to get the shuttle next week, I don't like surprises and some of the station staff we have come across are not too helpful.
We had a swift drink in the bar on here then headed down underground to the trolley tram service, even though the platform is fully accessible this tram wasn't, I'm not sure if that's the case with all of them, but seems a bit pointless putting stuff in if you then have to climb 3 very tall steps to get on. It was only 1 coach as well, so maybe they run 2 coach trams with a lower access level on one of the carriages like in Boston at times, who knows.
Anyhow, it was quicker than getting the bus, it was only 3 stops, 5 minutes or about 20 on the bus.
We came out near City Hall and walked through into Love Park, we tried to get ice cream from Macdonald's but they had sold out plus didn't have any air conditioning, we then headed to the Fine Arts Institute just round the corner that has a couple of strange items outside.
By now the heat was getting to me so just a short walk from here was Reading Terminal Market that we went in the other day, the AC works in here they have an ice cream parlour as well as a reasonably priced bar so spent 90 minutes in there watching the baseball.
So all that was left to do now was to consult Google Maps because CityMapper had got really weird on my phone and kept turning the brightness down to a point where I could not see what was going on anymore. This seems to be a problem that plagued it for a while now and was really starting to bug me. Basically, what happened when you open the app, it turns the brightness all the way down sometimes. The result in the bright sunlight is you cannot see the screen on the phone anymore. You can also not see the controls to turn the brightness back up which then makes your phone useless.
Goodbye CityMapper once I managed to turn the brightness back up or at least Jane did for me then uninstalled it, I'm fed up with crappy apps, CityMapper used to be good, but it's turned into shit like most transit apps (I even had one that you had to tell it where you were so you could pick a stop from thousands then it would tell you the times from the stop even though it was location-aware) they even try to cram crap like electric scooters into them when they still have problems like this, build a different app for all the weird stuff. Google Maps aren't much better as it loves to tell the last 6 buses all left on time, I'm not sure what use that is for anyone who wants to catch a bus if it's left on time 56 minutes ago?
That's my rant over with.
So we were back at the hotel to cool off by 5:30 but I decided after having to have something to eat to go for an evening walk, unfortunately, there are far too many aggressive beggars around here and most of them are just using it as an excuse to deal drugs which goes on fairly openly it would seem.
