Philadelphia - An underrated weekend destination

The heck with WC Fields. Philadelphia has world-class museums and symphony, great restaurants and hotels that go for a song on Priceline. I visit from NYC two to three times a year to see the Pennsylvania Ballet, visit friends, and shop. Philadelphia's thrift stores are amazing. Here's a record of my last trip, with some earlier hotel stays added for extra reference.

Quick Tips:

Getting to Philadelphia from New York: The cheap alternatives
There are two simple and fast options to get between these cites. A third, Amtrak, is the simplest and the fastest, but it’s at least twice as expensive.

Train: Take NJ Transit to Trenton and then the SEPTA to Philadelphia. Cost: About roundtrip during peak hours, less for off-peak travel. Time: About 2.5 hours.

Bus: There are several bus services to Phildelphia. I’ve never taken the infamous Chinatown bus, but it’s roundtrip. Greyhound has dropped its fares (September ’04) to roundtrip. Time: with rush-hour traffic, the trip took two hours. With clear traffic on the way back from Philadelphia, 20 or minutes less.

The bus lets you off in Philadelphia in a convenient location (the Chinatown bus and Greyhound terminals are within two blocks of each other around 11th and Arch.) The train lets you off at the 30th Street station, which means a cab or subway ride if you’re heading into Center City. The train takes longer, but there’s less hassle. The buses are jammed full. Don’t expect an empty seat next to you at a popular time.

Best Way To Get Around:

Unless you're going to the Barnes Foundation or the suburbs, you don't need a car in Philadelphia and you could conceivably do the Barnes by bus or cab. Cabs are cheap and the public transit system, SEPTA, is inexpensive and reliable.

I was able to get the Hilton Garden Inn for a $43 bid on Priceline. It goes for a bit more than the other usual three-star hotel in Center City, the Wyndham, but it’s a bit nicer for the money. Check-in was swift and pleasant, with no mention of Priceline. The room is a typical hotel room, pleasant and spacious with a faux-colonial motif, but there is also a hutch with a microwave and refrigerator. The bathroom is clean with Neutrogena toiletries, but slightly low shower pressure.

The hotel is situated right in Center City near the Convention Center, Reading Terminal Market, and Chinatown. If you’re traveling via bus, it is within one to two blocks from either the Greyhound or the infamous Chinatown Bus.

At Priceline rates, this is a very good value for the money, even better than the Wyndham, as high-speed internet access is included without charge. An unscientific tip if you’d like to increase your bidding chances of getting one or the other: it seems the Wyndham doesn’t release inventory at its lowest rates (around $38 right now) until one to two weeks before. The Hilton loads inventory early and at a slightly higher rate (between $41 and $43). If you’d like the Hilton, try bidding earlier; for the Wyndham, try closer to the date. Caveat emptor if you try this – there’s every chance with opaque bidding of getting something unexpected.

The Wyndham is where I have stayed on earlier Priceline bids. It's a very large hotel, often used for conventions, with large, modern public areas. Check-in was not the speediest, but friendly. The hotel is in need of renovation, mostly in the bathroom (leaky and worn tub, worn fixtures) and electrical and phone wiring, but it was comfortable and very reasonably priced (I got it on a $33 bid in December 2003, and it doesn't seem to go for less than $38 as of October 2004). I slept well and I'd stay here again.

I used this hotel when I was visiting friends in the northwest suburbs near King of Prussia. Another Priceline find, it was $45 for a bid made in April 2004. It would be not be a convenient option for someone without a car.

This is a standard Residence Inn - spacious room with kitchen/dinette area, sitting area with a sofa bed, and sleeping area with a queen-size bed. It's larger (and neater) than my New York apartment. My friends have an infant, so, instead of fighting with a cranky kid to go to a restaurant, we had food delivered, and we were able to eat it at the dinette. There are also dishes and cutlery here. There's free, high-speed internet access via ethernet cable. A hot buffet breakfast is served from 6:30 to 9am and included inthe price.

This place really worked for my situation. For Priceline bidding, I think 2.5-star hotels (in the U.S., as the quality is lower internationally) suit me better than some 3-star, because I find the comfort in a Residence Inn or Courtyard just fine, and there are many fewer incidental charges.

Singapore is a Chinese vegetarian restaurant that is a ritual for me on trips to Philadelphia.

I can only talk about one dish there because I order it every time - the orange "beef." This is fried vegetable protein cooked in the same manner as beef in orange sauce, and I can say, as a devout carnivore, it tastes better than the meat version. It doesn’t taste exactly like meat; it’s lighter and crispier, but it’s delicious.

The ambience is of a typical Chinese restaurant, but slightly more new age (lots of vegetarian advocacy, and they were slightly disappointed when I said I wanted white rice!), but the service is quite friendly and the prices reasonable (entrees are under $10.)

Bistro St. Tropez is near the Schuykill on the fourth floor of a converted industrial building that is now a mall of a sort. It’s a slightly atypical location for a restaurant, which takes a small amount of getting used to.

The menu of the place is French, the décor, American modern. The restaurant is spacious and the food is good – I had mussels in white-wine sauce and a sautéed pork chop.

We were a large group, so we had a pre-set menu in a room reserved for large parties at the back. This place is a nice option if you need to set up a large party; the view over the river is quite lovely at sunset. My own personal preference, if dining in a smaller group, would be a more adventurous choice among Philadelphia’s ethnic restaurants.

Bump is located at 13 and Locust and is the chic gay lounge of the neighborhood. Very modern interior (but orange, for god’s sake) and a very pretty young staff. The crowd is young and pretty and like Philadelphia, diverse racially. Drinks are expensive, and the big specialty is the chocolate martini. It starts getting noisy on Friday night after 10pm. There is also an area for ordering food.

Woody’s is about two blocks to the north of Bump on 13th Street. It’s large with several options of where to go and what to do, including a discotheque on the second floor with gogo boys ($5 cover on Friday nights).

Drinks are less expensive than Bump, and the atmosphere is less chic, but it seems to get a bigger crowd of more varied types.

Albert Barnes was a doctor and business man in the first half of the 20th century who made his fortune on an antiseptic called Argyrol. He was also man of very particular opinions and an extraordinary eye for art. The collection on the outskirts of Philadelphia is jammed with impressionist and modern masters, but also masterpieces of Renaissance and non-Western art. It’s all packed into two floors, exactly as Barnes stipulated, and the major aspect of the museum’s notoriety. Barnes may have been a control freak, but he was not a nut; there’s method to his madness, and the museum is not as remote as publicity would have it.

Information on getting to the museum is at their website, www.barnesfoundation.org. By far the easiest way is by car, but a bus going to City Line Avenue would let you off about a 6- to 8-block walk from the museum. Parking at the museum is most convenient, but is $10. RESERVATIONS ARE REQUIRED for both parking and admission and should be made about one month in advance. They can be made online. Block out 2-3 hours and try and take each room slowly.

You can easily go into museum coma; there were so many Renoirs that, by the end, they started to blur. The pictures that stayed with me were the stranger ones - a hallucinatory Odilon Redon and several provocatively naïve Henri Rousseaus. There are also pleasant gardens worth a stroll. If you have any extra time in Philadelphia to go beyond the Center City attractions, this is not to be missed.