philly skyscrapers and greenery

Ahh, Philly was beautiful Saturday, a perfect day to be outside. We went to study in Center City and walked around for lunch. Here's some views of the city from our perspective:

This is Broad St, renamed Avenue of the Arts for all of the theaters along the street. The big tower in the center is the south tower of city hall, there's a similar tower on the north side. Basically it's smack dab in the center of Broad and the street sort of circles clockwise around the big behemoth. It's an awesome sight driving up Broad with the tower approaching in the distance.

More big buildings

Interesting statue holding up a clock...

...and from the front along with the big buildings that you see everywhere around the heart of center city, the heart of the heart of philadelphia...

...here's what the metal man was standing over, a familiar, welcoming (or maybe not) color to many of you:

I think it's an ex fire house, but the street's so small I don't know where they'd put the fire truck, maybe around the back. It was some kind of eatery underneath.

This is one of the few malls in the city, kinda small I heard, didn't go in.

There are a lot of cathedral looking churches about this size around the city. This is one of the more interesting ones I've seen, not that the others weren't interesting.

Summer foliage in Rittenhouse Square Park. My friend told me there is a Christmas tree that gets put up in December, I'll definitely be there to take pics. Sometimes I get the right balance of exposure with my little digicam to capture an image with vibrant colors and contrast. This is one of those few times, I didn't have to fuss with it on the computer. Click to embiggen.

People lounging in the park

Guitar player jamming slow tunes, he was later joined by a trumpeter.

The benches we sat on had these plaques on it, I guess you can donate/buy your own bench. I wonder if that means you can kick people off your bench?

Hispanic family with 2 kids who were playing behind us.

Families coming out to play

A statue near where we sat

Building bathed in the waning afternoon light, set behind a rittenhouse neighborhood.

Building against soft whispy clouds at dusk light...errr maybe more like late afternoon light

Murals, one of many. Somewhere else, they even had one where they painted windows on a wall with a painted ledge with plants and they made a hole in the wall where they placed a pot of flowers in. Really cool, I'll take a pic if I pass by there again

Another mural/sketch.

That's it, more studying Sunday and looking forward to Labor day. What are you all doing for the upcoming three day weekend?

ps, we had dinner Friday night at an Ethiopian place that was really good. It was served with these sourdough crepes that's used to scoop up the goodness from the plate. Most of it were veggies but we had lamb and beef too. I ordered the lamb and my friend ordered the beef, but we ended up liking the other's meat choices, go figure. Here's a picture of the partially consumed food...apparently there's an image on the bottom of the plate that I completely missed until now...guess we'll have to go there again :)

pps, it technically wasn't Ethiopian food, it was Eritrean food. Eritrea was a province of Ethiopia until citizens whined, complained, civil wared (for 31 years!!!!), and the UN intervened and finally Eritrea was declared independent by an overwhelming vote by its citizens. Look at the Eritrea link, they have a monument dedicated to the sandals the revolutionaries wore...the sandal monument. So I guess they share a lot of the culture and food.