Wednesday Daily Thread

Back from Philly! My takeaways/highlights:

There was an awesome Chinese Lantern Festival at one of the parks. It was a really cool setup near Chinatown.

Tons of kids everywhere, especially in the awesome pocket parks/squares. Made me feel a little bad about leaving the little one with grandma and grandpa. I definitely see the appeal to a large number of smaller neighborhood parks.

Tons of tourism. Richmond doesn't even compare in terms of the number of tourists, which is weird because I feel like Richmond has a lot of historical stuffs. Philly definitely beats RVA in terms of museums. Tourism in RVA won't be a thing until we get a duck boat. Also, Philly seems to have a bunch of statues for the Union side... weird...

The Mütter Museum is interesting, but has far too many fetal specimens when you have a 6 month pregnant wife. Also, it is a bit cramped. It was also hot and humid that day, which did not make for great walking.

Uber in Philly is definitely much more of a thing. They also have Uberpool, which is a car pooling service which SOMETIMES works great. Other times, like when we left the super awesome Flight of the Conchords show, you try and use it (it's hella cheaper) and you wind up with an Uber driver sitting on top of you but unable to pick you up because they're waiting for other people to request. Leaving the show was a bit of a shit show. Our eventual Uber driver was, judging by the smell of the vehicle, high on the marijuana reefers.

I wish we had a Chinatown, and I wish we had gone through Chinatown when it was closer to lunch. However, Chinatown on trash day does NOT smell good. Wife almost vomited in the street. Also, the smell coming from the convention center parking area was up there on the "Worst Things I've Ever Smelled" list, along with the sea lions in Monterey. Seriously, it smelled like 100 hobos all got together and took a collective shit then left it there for 3 days.

Driving in Philly apparently requires you to honk your horn near constantly.

Amtrak is delightful. Roomy seats and no TSA to get on. It's a fantastic way to travel. Bring your own food, though.

Also, I wound up having a jalapeno cheesesteak and watching US win the soccer game.

/r/rva Thread