Connecticut makes the 49th state I have been to (someday I'll have to visit my friend Sandra in Hawaii and finish my collection). I was expecting tiny Connecticut to go nearly as fast as Rhode Island, but in fact we spent the largest part of our day in the Nutmeg State. Just beyond the border we had a long stop for no discernable reason. We had another long wait at New London, an old industrial city whose station is right next to the port. We left New London 30 minutes late, and then literally inched forward past a strip of beaches next to Long Island Sound. Such delays are obviously not the norm on this line, and the other passengers were getting visibly upset about it. One young man apparently had a job interview in New York at 4:00, and he was obviously quite worried about whether or not he would make it. Before long the conductor came on and apologized for the delay (which was actually one of the shortest we had experienced on Amtrak). He said that the cab signals were down--whatever that might mean. We would be late arriving in New Haven, but there we would switch to an electric engine, and we should make up time south of New York.
We were in fact 44 minutes late leaving New Haven. Once they added the electric engine, the loudspeaker system developed an annoying buzz. Eventually it got so loud that the conductor had to turn it off and do all the announcements in person. Between New Haven and New York I bought my lunch for the day: a plate of assorted crackers and cheese from the lounge car. It was the sort of thing they package at Christmas time as a gift for someone you don't really know. At $3, it was really quite reasonably priced, and it was interesting to try all the different varieties of cheese. I was still snacking on the crackers when we entered New York state at 3:15pm.
We drove past suburb after suburb south (actually west) of New Haven. We flew past commuter stop after commuter stop, pausing only briefly at New Rochelle (where Lucy and Ricky moved to when they left the city on "I Love Lucy") before turning south for New York City. We entered New York through the Bronx, past aging tenement blocks and ugly factories. Then we turned southeast and entered Long Island on an imposing old concrete pier bridge called "Hell's Gate". We passed the New York subway rail yard in Queens, and shortly beyond there tunneled underground to enter Manhattan from the east--running directly under the Empire State Building.
We arrived at Penn Station at 3:51pm--46 minutes late, and chances are not soon enough for the young man to get to his job interview on time. Probably three-fourths of the people on board left here, and equally many people got on. The platform was under construction in New York, and some people seemed to have trouble finding their way to the exits. We finally left New York at 4:05pm.
We tunneled under the Hudson and surfaced in New Jersey. We followed exactly the same route that we had taken on the New Jersey Transit commuter trains when I brought the quiz bowl team out here two years ago, and many of the landmarks looked familiar. There was one big difference, though--the Amtrak train moved much faster than NJT. We literally raced across New Jersey, stopping only briefly at the Metropark station that is adjacent to the NJ Turnpike. NJT, in contrast, stops every couple of miles. Two years ago it had taken well over an hour to go from the city back to New Brunswick, where we stayed. As we raced along, I soon realized we were crossing the Raritan River and riding high on the viaduct over New Brunswick--barely half an hour after we had left New York.
We continued to move fast south of New Brunswick. This was new territory to us, but nothing really very different. Until well past Princeton the area was heavily built up--still very obviously part of metro New York. As we neared Trenton, we finally saw a few farms that might hint at New Jersey's "Garden State" nickname.
Trenton is a place I have absolutely no desire to see again. New Jersey's capital city is a decrepit, unsightly industrial town with nothing I could see for redeeming value. The train stopped briefly at an crumbling outdoor platform next to a junkyard. We could see the state capital dome in the distance, but it hardly made up for the hideous foreground.
We crossed the Delaware at Trenton and entered Pennsylvania at 5:09pm. We made our way through Philadelphia's northern suburbs (which had all the charm of Trenton) and then into the city itself. My first impressions of the city were that it looked a lot like the bad parts of Chicago. The rail corridor goes through a series of bad neighborhoods that switch from boarded-up rowhouses to graffiti-covered factories. While Chicago has a lovely skyline and a charming downtown, though, to my mind downtown Philadelphia wasn't much better than outlying districts. Even after staying there a few days, I never did care much for Philadelphia. Margaret obviously liked the city, but for me it was a big step down from Boston.
The conductor was definitely right about making up time south of New York; we arrived at Philadelphia's 30th Street Station on time at 5:30pm, and they expected that the train should continue on time to Wilmington, Baltimore, and Washington. We stepped off the train, and made an easy transfer to the commuter rail portion of the station. We were staying near the Philadelphia airport, and SEPTA (the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) runs trains out there every half hour. We purchased tickets and made our way to the appropriate platform to catch the R-1 train. Margaret immediately noticed the lovely computerized signs they had on the platforms (Metra has similar signs at many Chicagoland stations), stating which train would leave next and what its status was (ours was 2 minutes late). We found out later from a rather cynical local resident that these signs were one of many long-promised improvements that had been installed just a week before--hoping to impress the politicians at the Republican National Convention. When we found this out, I instantly remembered when we had visited Chicago four years ago, right before the Democrats held their convention there. They were making over the whole city--right down to giving every el platform a fresh coat of paint. I'm sure the same thing had happened here. However, regardless of their motives, at least they now have those nice new signs which will benefit passengers long after the conventioneers have gone.
While we waited I read through a paper called Metro, which is a most interesting publication. It is distributed free each day on transit platforms all around greater Philadelphia. Unlike most free papers, though, which are either bullhorns for someone to shout their bizarre politics or covers for dating services, Metro was a real newspaper published daily in tabloid format and supported by traditional advertising. I found it every bit as informative and quite a bit more interesting than the Philadelphia Inquirer, the city's primary daily. They have USA Today-like summaries of world and national news, plus in-depth reports on local issues (today's big story was a plane crash in the New Jersey suburbs). In the middle there's a page devoted to SEPTA, where you can find any service changes for the next few days. I was fascinated by the concept, and it amazes me that other cities haven't gone for the idea.
The train arrived, and we quickly boarded it. Unfortunately, we couldn't place our luggage in the overhead racks, because a woman with a baby stroller was blocking the aisle. So we crammed ourselves and our bags in one bench seat for the fifteen-minute ride southward. We stopped at Eastwick station, where both we and the woman with the stroller got off. Most of the platform at Eastwick is at ground level, but they have one small section that is raised for handicapped access. They stopped the train so that the door of our car was by that raised section, but that didn't help much with either the stroller or the luggage. There was a gap at least eight inches wide between the car and the platform. The conductor helped lift both people and bags from the train to the platform, and before long the train was on its way again.
We now had to figure out how to get to our hotel, which was not nearly so close to the station as the Motel 6 in Braintree had been. In fact, there wasn't much of anything that was close to Eastwick station--a few blocks of rowhouses and a bunch of undeveloped land, but virtually no businesses of any sort. We left the station and walked south on Bartram Avenue, a six-lane highway that now (like virtually the entire time we were there) was almost completely empty. It was raining as we walked, and again there were no sidewalks. Most of the way we walked along the median of the highway, but we had to carry our heavy bags, so we kept stopping every few feet. Eventually we found a stretch of the highway that had a paved shoulder, so we crossed over to there and wheeled our luggage the rest of the way. It was a little over half a mile from the station to our hotel.
The Fairfield Inn--Philadelphia Airport is located in what amounts to a small city of hotels that are otherwise close to nothing. We passed the Microtel and the Hampton Inn coming from the station. Closer to the airport were at least a dozen hotels, ranging from Embassy Suites and Hilton to Holiday Inn Express and Knight's Inn. All of them had obviously been built quite recently (the Fairfield was new in 1999), and besides one lone office building (the headquarters of "PNC Bank") there was nothing but the hotels in the neighborhood. Someone could make a fortune if they'd open a Perkin's or a McDonalds here.
Both this and the Motel 6--Braintree were the cheapest convenient places we could stay in the two respective cities. You get a bit of a clue into the economies when you realize that the Fairfield Inn cost only two-thirds as much as the Motel 6, but was a much better grade of hotel. There was certainly nothing wrong with the Motel 6, but here our room was half again as large, with an enormous bathroom and lots of incidental furniture. There was a pool and exercise room (not that we used them), as well as a large lobby and a separate room where they served their complimentary breakfast.
We really wished that we could have gotten that complimentary breakfast at 6:30 at night, because we were getting hungry and there was absolutely nowhere to eat anywhere around. We attempted to order pizza from a place that advertised in the hotel guide, but we couldn't get through to them (I think this part of Philadelphia has recently changed area codes, and that was screwing things up). So we ended up snacking from the hotel vending machine and then calling it a night.
Before I actually dozed off, I read through the Philadelphia Inquirer and a couple of other papers I had acquired, and I got a bit of insight into this city. Most cities offer adult services of various types, but Philadelphia seems to be a place where anything goes. There were page after page of personal ads where they described the indescribable in exacting detail. There were also countless display ads for strip joints (most euphemistically referred to as "gentlemen's clubs") and adult theaters all over the area. In the "Culture & Arts" section they were reviewing a play called "Making Porn", which is apparently a serious Broadway travelling show, but whose title certainly seemed to fit in with a running theme. It's not like I couldn't find most of these same things (except for the play) in Waterloo or Dubuque, but there seemed to be an extraordinary over-abundance in Philadelphia. I wondered how many of the Bible-thumping Republicans enjoyed a hypocritical boys' night out last week.
I really wish society could find a happy medium on issues like this. Although my own life is really quite dull, I've certainly known people who did just about anything, and in general I figure that when it comes to consenting adults, what people do is pretty much their business. The problem comes up when that business becomes my business. I don't want to hear about people's personal lives, and I don't think adult establishments should be advertising in family newspapers. My attitudes on this were really driven home last year during the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal. I honestly don't care what the President and his aide may have done. That's really for the President and his wife to work out; it's none of my business. Unfortunately, all the Republicans in Washington felt compelled to make it my business, and frankly I resented them for it. If anything will make me vote for Al Gore it's all those "hoilier than thou" Republicans who had to call attention to Clinton's actions by describing them in no uncertain terms for weeks on the evening news. It's a wonder our kids turn out as well as they do, when these so-called "conservatives" who say they are "protecting" children expose them to ideas like this so publicly. I really do believe there are some things that are nobody's business, things that should not be talked about in public or advertised in daily newspapers. My Puritan background came out again in Philadelphia; I was downright offended by all the sleaze.
FRIDAY, August 11
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
We slept in fairly late this morning and had breakfast (bagels and muffins) at the hotel. We walked to Eastwick and took the train back to 30th Street station. There we transferred to the local subway system. The Philadelphia subway had also been scrubbed up for the Republicans. This was immediately obvious to me; the stations were immaculate, while the tunnels were plastered with graffiti. They also have absolutely brand new subway cars, which can't be more than a few months old--very convenient timing for the convention. That said, as on the commuter trains, I'm sure the improvements were needed, and they will be used long after the politicians have been forgotten.
We took the subway downtown to 5th Street, which is in the heart of the city's tourist area--right in front of the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. Our luck was with us this morning, because there was virtually no line at Independence Hall and we got in for a tour almost immediately.
They start the tour with a fascinating little film. It says nothing about the history and background of the building (that comes from the guide while you are looking around the place). Instead, what the film does is teach proper historic site etiquette. They do a good job of politely saying what you can and can't do here, and why. It's all stuff that really should be common sense, and it's really too bad that they find the need to show it.
Independence Hall has been declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations. Our guide repeatedly referred to it as "the most historic building in America". That's probably true; there are certainly few buildings that could compete with it--and those that could wouldn't have existed were it not for what transpired here. Construction began in 1732 on the building that was to be the Pennsylvania State House. In 1776 the Declaration of Independence was adopted here, and then in 1789 the building was used again for the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. Given that the Constitution has now stood longer than any other formal articles of government in history and that it has served as the model for constitutions in nations around the world (even the old Soviet Union modeled their constitution on ours), the world heritage designation is certainly understandable.
It is fortunate that such a historic building is also truly beautiful. Its Quaker simplicity contrasts quite favorably with the government temples down the road in Washington. It is a simple, elegant, and really lovely building--both inside and out.
We first saw the Supreme Court chamber, which was originally used by the high court of Pennsylvania and later became the first home of the United States Supreme Court. Then we went into what our guide called "the most historic room in the United States". The legislative chamber has been set with period furnishings to look as it would have when the Declaration of Independence was signed. They even have an assortment of the delegates' original personal effects. Most prominent is the famous Speaker's chair from which Washington presided over the assembly. The top of the chair is carved with half the image of a sun. Ben Franklin is quoted as saying that during the Constitutional convention he pondered that sun repeatedly, wondering whether it was a rising or a setting sun. Once the Constitution was adopted, he said he was pleased to be able to say that it was a rising sun--rising over the new nation. We then went upstairs and saw a grand banquet hall and offices that were also restored to colonial days.
Directly in front of Independence Hall is the Liberty Bell Pavilion, a garish modern structure that was built for the Bicentennial and clashes rather violently with its historic surroundings. There was a large line there, made up mostly of Chinese people from "Golden Dragon Tours". The line moved fairly quickly, though--especially for English-speaking visitors--and before long we were inside. The bell itself is really more impressive than I had imagined; it is four or five feet high and at roughly that wide as well. The famous crack (which would be called a stress fracture in the metal today) is hard to miss, and the inscription from Leviticus "Proclaim liberty through all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof" is just as meaningful today as it was two centuries ago. A German tourist asked us to take his picture by the bell, and we happily obliged. Then we snapped our own shots and made our way through the sea of visitors to the exits.
We went back to the subway and took the train to 11th Street. That's actually two stops west of 5th; the stops are incredibly close together in Philadelphia. We made our way from the station to Reding Terminal Market, a most fascinating destination. This was originally the Philadelphia terminal of the Reding Railroad of Monopoly fame. Today the old train shed has been converted to a market which, unlike Quincy Market in Boston, really is an old European-style market (although, I'll still take America over Europe; at Reding Terminal the meat was refrigerated). In addition every type of meat and produce, they also have all kinds of take-out restaurants and a variety of stands that sell flea market items. This weekend they were holding the annual Pennsylvania Dutch Festival at Reding Terminal Market, so they had tables of Amish crafts and baked goods--not to mention a choir of Mennonite kids entertaining us with Christian rock songs.
I bought an Amish quilt block wall hanging at Reding Terminal Market, as well as some freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and some very soft ice cream. We considered having lunch, but the place was utterly packed to the point that it would have been both time consuming and annoying to eat there.
Next we took the subway back to 5th Street, and we walked north a couple of blocks to the United States Mint. We had planned on touring the mint, but they had a sign out front saying that they were closed this afternoon. We then walked back past Independence Hall to the Curtis Center, the former headquarters of the Curtis Publishing Company, which produced the Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies' Home Journal. Various guidebooks had informed us that there was a small museum of Norman Rockwell's work in the basement of the Curtis Center. Unfortunately, as so often happens with guidebooks, the information was out of date. Curtis Publishing no longer is located here (they apparently consolidated with some other company and moved their headquarters to New York). Today it's just an office building, and while they have a lovely Tiffany mosaic in the lobby (much like the ceiling at Marshall Field's), there's no museum of any kind here. We asked a guard near one of the entrances where the museum was. He obviously had heard the question numerous times from tourists. He directed us down the street to the Atwater--Kent Museum, a museum of local history endowed by one of America's first electronics manufacturers. They were temporarily displaying the artifacts that used to be housed in the Curtis Center. Where the stuff will go once the temporary exhibit closes, I have no idea.
The Norman Rockwell exhibit at Atwater--Kent was really quite interesting. They have all the magazine covers Rockwell ever produced, arranged to tell stories and trace the evolving history of our country. Ina few cases they also display the original artwork for the covers or studies Rockwell did for work that ended up going in entirely different directions. Some of the most impressive pieces are the "Four Freedoms" series from World War II; his moving painting on school integration called "The Problem We All Face", which shows a neatly dressed black girl being escorted to school by faceless Federal marshals as a tomato is thrown at her from the foreground; and a parody of modern art that shows a caricature of Rockwell standing perplexed in front of a very realistic Jackson Pollack painting. It's interesting that Rockwell, who was considered passe for years by members of the "real" art community, is now becoming more appreciated. It's probably true that no artist is really respected during his lifetime. Whenever I see Rockwell's work--especially the original oils--I am in awe of the almost photographic detail he is able to capture. I also like the optimism he shows in his work; while he does show some of America's faults (as in the integration painting), he makes a point about how he feels America should be.
There was a second exhibit at Atwater--Kent tracing the history of political campaigns. It was obviously timed to coincide with the Republican convention, but it was interesting to look through. I must confess, though, that it was disappointing to see their comparatively small display after having seen the Smithsonian's treatment of the same topic (which fills a floor at the National Museum of American History). We made a point of seeing everything, but we didn't dawdle.
We made our way to a downtown mall called The Gallery at Marketplace East, which is basically a bunch of former office buildings that are now connected by skywalks. It reminded me immensely of the Unicity Mall in Jackson, Mississippi, where I went a number of times in grad school. On the inside, both malls look extremely generic--all the requisite mall stores in a wide variety of price ranges (this one ranged from K-Mart to a snooty place called "Strawbridge & Clothier"). The thing that makes both memorable, though, is the clientele they serve--which is almost exclusively black. In this respect, Philadelphia and Boston could not be more different. Probably three-fourths of the people on the street in Philly are African-American, with Asians, Hispanics, and white Anglos split almost equally among the other quarter. While I've been in the minority in any number of cities, I'm not sure I've ever been to a city that was so overwhelmingly black. The mall reflected this, with the stores all featuring fashions that appealed to black tastes. Even where a style was universal, the color selection tended toward those that favored darker skin tones. I got a bit of an idea of what a black person must feel like shopping in Iowa. You certainly can't blame the stores, though; of course they're going to stock what their customers want.
By now it was mid-afternoon, and well past lunchtime. The local food in Philadelphia is the cheesesteak. I had read about these and decided I should try one. There was a cheesesteak place in the food court, so that's where we had our late lunch. To make a cheesesteak, the cook starts with probably half a pound of shaved beef, mixed with chunks of onion and often sweet pepper. These are sauteed slowly, and gradually formed into a pile. On top of the pile the chef places strips of bland white cheese (probably jack or mild white cheddar), which melts into a slime amid the beef and onion mixture. He then scoops the whole mess into a submarine roll, with criss-cross fries on the side. It may sound disgusting, but boy is it good! If I lived in Philly, I'd gain a hundred pounds eating these tasty things.
We intended our next destination to be a prison. That may sound odd, but Philadelphia is home to America's oldest standing penitentiary. It's no longer operative (although it just closed in 1971), but it is a national historic landmark. We intended to add this to the ever-growing list of off-beat attractions we had visited. So we took the green line subway (which amounts to a old-fashioned streetcar that runs through a tunnel downtown) west to 22nd Street. From there it was a short walk north to the prison. Unfortunately between us and it was one of the worst neighborhoods I have seen anywhere. Immediately outside the station was a strip of adult theaters and related establishments (presumably some of which were among the advertisers I had read about in the papers yesterday). Beyond that we saw block after block of empty buildings with their windows smashed out. Margaret felt especially uncomfortable, because the people in the neighborhood were exclusively male; but I was far from at ease myself. We quickly retreated to the station and were only too happy when an eastbound streetcar arrived.
We made our way to 2nd Street, in the oldest part of the city. Just north of there we found Christ Church, the oldest religious house in the city. One of my guidebooks (Access: Philly) writes the following blather about Christ Church: "If you sailed into Philadelphia during the 1700s, the white steeple of this church would have welcomed you, just as the Statue of Liberty held out her hand to travelers from afar in New York." What they don't say, of course, is that the Statue of Liberty became a landmark more than a century after Christ Church, which was completed in 1744. We got in on the end of a tour for a Christian group from South Carolina, so we heard a bit more about the history of the church than we would have if we had just poked our head in. This place was also based on Sir Christopher Wren's designs (I think there must be more American churches that stole his designs than there were original British churches). It was Ben Franklin's home church, and George Washington was among many patriots who worshipped here with some regularity. America's Protestant Episcopal Church was founded here in 1785, and they're also proud to have adopted the American version of the Book of Common Prayer here in 1789. Having grown up with the old Methodist prayers, most of which were taken directly from the Book of Common Prayer (since John Wesley started as a priest in the Church of England), that was especially interesting to me. There is an exquisite beauty in the language of those old prayers--definitely a high point for the English language.
It amused Margaret and me when one of the tour bus Christians pointed to the hymn board at the side of the chancel and asked what it was. He suggested the numbers (one of which was "11") might be last week's attendance. The church I go to is not large, but I can't imagine having only 11 in church, especially in a major city. The guide explained what a hymn board was, and went on to point out that the actual attendance at last Sunday's mass was over 400 (which was bigger than the highest-numbered hymn). I know there are churches that don't use hymn boards, but it amazed me that someone in a Christian tour group had never seen one.
Next up we saw a small neighborhood of gentrified rowhouses called Elfreth's Alley, which proclaims itself "the oldest continuously inhabited street in the United States". That is simply false. Leyden Street in Plymouth has been inhabited since 1620--and we won't even mention Florida or the Southwest. What they probably mean is that the oldest of the homes here have been continuously inhabited since the 1720s, when they were built. Certainly nothing survives in Plymouth that is that old, and I don't recall seeing any homes in St. Augustine or Santa Fe that were that old either. It must be mentioned, though, saying the "neighborhood" or the "street" dates to he 1720s would be stretching it. Only a couple of the rowhouses are that old; most are from around the time of the Civil War, which means the bulk of New Orleans and Charleston (and even a number of residences in my old hometown of Mt. Pleasant) would predate them. That said, it is still a charming little neighborhood. I'm sure no one I know could afford to live here (one street away the residents fence in their snooty cars in razor wire lots), but walking through it made for a pleasant diversion.
Our last point of interest today was Fireman's Hall. The Philadelphia Fire Department is the oldest in the country, one of many innovations created by Benjamin Franklin. Today they run a lovely (and free) museum, housed in a turn-of-the-century firehouse. I was a little kid again when I saw the glistening brass fire pole (though they had the floor plugged up with plastic, so you couldn't slide down), as well as the firebox reporting system. While I last saw fireboxes when I was very young, they still have those old emergency alarms on street corners in Boston and Philadelphia (there was even one attached to the façade of the K-Mart near our motel in Braintree). Here we saw the other end of the system: a combination bell and telegraph system that recorded when a firebox was activated. The museum also displayed every other type of fire equipment you could imagine: trucks, hoses, axes, ladders, extinguishers, uniforms. I really loved the place; it took me back to those days of watching Emergency when I got home from school.
We were browsing through the museum gift shop when the attendant (himself a fireman) got a phone call. Apparently a fireman from Australia had visited the museum yesterday, and he called back today, looking for a fellow fireman who could take him out drinking (leave it to the Aussies). The museum attendant directed him to the union hall, and I do hope someone there was able to show him a good time.
It started raining as we left Fireman's Hall--not a hard rain, but enough that we hauled out umbrellas. Since there was nowhere to eat near our hotel, we figured we should eat downtown. We wandered through the historic area, reading menu after menu, but nothing really seemed just right. We ended up settling on, of all things, an Afghani restaurant. Until now, most of what I knew of Afghanistan came from reading James Michener's Caravans--or possibly from news reports of the Russian war there. I certainly never imagined Afghanistan having a "cuisine". It apparently does, and we thoroughly stuffed ourselves with a wonderful dinner.
Ariana is a tiny restaurant located on the street-level floor of a rowhouse about three blocks east of Independence Hall. It is owned by a family of Afghani immigrants, and the walls are plastered with trinkets from Central Asia. The tables, on the other hand, could be in an elegant European restaurant--with lime green table clothes, hardwood chairs, bone china and elegant glassware. (The "Paul Revere" stainless flatware--the same pattern our mother bought after she sold her good silver to go to England--was a bit out of place, but it did lend a Colonial touch in the old city.) Our waitress might best be described as a liberated modern Moslem woman, an oxymoron if ever there was one. She wore traditional Islamic headgear, together with form-fitting black pants. Unlike the countless Moslem women we saw cowering on the streets of Philadelphia (and Islam is very big here, both among Blacks and Asians), I could definitely see this woman standing up to the rather wimpy men who worked with her.
The food was delightful--or at least mine was. I had kebobs of peppery chicken chunks alternating with roasted onions and tomatoes, served over brown rice with sour cream on the side. Margaret had some unpronounceable Afghani dish that consisted of a lentil paste on rice. That sounded absolutely disgusting to me, but she seemed to like it. We also had delicious soup, a simple salad with a creamy and flavorful dressing, and outstanding traditional desserts (spiced ice cream and custard-like nut pudding). This was by far the most expensive place we ate--particularly since everything, including each glass of iced tea, was a la carte--but it was definitely worth it.
We lingered longer than we might have at Ariana, because while we ate it started pouring. Still, the whole time we were in the place, there was only one other customer. A lone businesswoman came in while we were having our soup. She ate her whole meal and left before we got our dessert. It was pushing 7:00 by the time we left, but there was still no one else in the place. Either people eat late in Philadelphia, or we were just about the only people to discover the pleasures of Afghani cookery.
CONTINUED IN PART 6
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