The city of brotherly love

I'm finally home after spending a week in Philadelphia at the big annual American Society of Human Genetic meeting. Good meeting, my talk went well and lucky for me I escaped question time fairly well unscathed (I was really worried given the controversial nature of my subject!)

The hotel was decent, big rooms, and connected to the conference center by a covered walkway (bonus). Philly was cold but not as cold as I was expecting. The clouds barely shifted above the buildings for the first few days, but thankfully there was only minor drizzle. The scenes of city hall and the surrounding buildings at night were pretty speccy! Very Gotham City.



We were right in the heart of downtown with a big undercover food market just next door, stocked with Amish treats, a cheese shop and fried oysters! There was even a pickle stand! Wewt. We were also very close to Chinatown and some great food (including a surprising Chinese-French-Vietnamese fusion) which always makes me happy :)


I didn't get in a whole lot of sightseeing, mostly because the conference took up so much time and headspace, but what I did see I really liked. Philly is a historic city and the interp is well structured but also nice and simple. The architecture is just gorgeous, especially with the drizzly grey skies and rich fall colours in all the trees.


We wandered through quite a bit of the historic precinct, and did manage to see the Liberty Bell in amongst the throng of people desperate to take its picture.


Not being an American I'm still trying to get my head around the concept of libery as it is used here. That confusion aside, however, there was some really beautiful interp on the way to viewing the bell, about civil rights progression through the years. Nothing on gay rights in that set but I was relieved to see the following 'monument' outside. More about that in the next blog post!