Philadelphia - city of culture, Part II

First of all, go to the visitor's center located at the corner of 16th St and JFK. There you can find lots of information on siteseeing. Also there are schedules of city buses. In addition, if you walk to the AAA office on 20th St. and Market St., you can get even more information on where to go. They have a magazine called "Philadelphia" published quarterly that has a large list of entertainment and dining places, it also has some coupons.

Quick Tips:

If this is your first visit to Philly, the places to see are all located along Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and they are the Art Museum, Rodin Museum, Franklin Institute. Then you can also go to see the City Hall, and stroll along Market St. to the Independence Hall and Liberty Bell.

Best Way To Get Around:

You can walk or use public transportation. Walking along main streets is OK even at night, because Philly has a lot of night clubs and there are lots of people on the streets especially on Market and South Streets.

Located at the corner of 2nd and Chestnut Streets, this building used to be a bank at one time. Now it is one of the prettier restaurants in the Center City. It takes up two stories, but most of the sitting space is on the first floor with the bar and kitchen located there. Up the stairs a small part of the second floor, almost like a balcony has some more sitting space. The balcony is a great place for a birthday party, since you can easily sit 30-40 people and be slightly isolated. It is also the best place to sit if you want to enjoy the architecture and décor of the restaurant. From here you can see all the paintings on the walls, the S-shaped line the splits the first floor into two areas, observe the tables and people below you. The food is very good but pricey. The chef is very good and the menu is interesting and unusual. You should try it at least once, you will really enjoy yourself.

Located right in the Rittenhouse Square (the very center of the city), this is one of the 3 restaurants located in the Rittenhouse Regency building. This area is really gorgeous in spring. The Rittenhouse square is full of flowers and blooming trees, and you can enjoy dining outside. The Rittenhouse square also has a flower show every May.

Devon specializes in seafood. So this is a place for everybody – both vegetarians and non-vegetarians. The food is pretty good. The waiters on the other hand are different. Some are nice, some not. This is a great place for people to hang out. You can see a lot of people here in the evening, sipping beer, talking. Grab a window seat and you will be able to enjoy the view of the square.

Around the corner, there is Curtis Hall, the famous Philly music school, and they have free recitals twice a week. So you can check that out as well.

Philadelphia has several Russian restaurants that are all located in Northeast Philly. Golden Gate is by far the best and the largest. Northeast Philly has a large community of Russian expatriots and you can hear Russian being spoken everywhere. This particular restaurant is very much like restaurants on Brighton Beach in NYC, it has food and entertainment.

Golden Gate is a great place for weddings and birthdays. For Saturday evening a reservation is a must. The food is delicious and the entertainment is the best in the Northeast Philly. At around 10 pm the musicians start to sing, there is large space in front of them to dance and people really enjoy themselves. The restaurant doesn't close till about 3 am, so you can dance all night there. It's also great for New Year's and large parties. If you want to drink, bring you own liquor.

The best place to sit is on the balcony. It accommodates about 50 people and you can have your own small private party in the middle of everything. The tables are all decorated with beautiful flower arrangements, and the musicians will play anything you like. Also for a wedding they have a choice of 20 different cakes, you can also have stairs and pillars and fountains supporting the cake. The chocolate horns, swans, fruit plates made of melons, strawberries, oranges, kiwi, pineapple and a variety of other fruits are an art in itself and it's really a shame to eat them when they look so beautiful.

Every time I was here, I had a good time. Hopefully so will you.

This is yet another Russian restaurant in Northeast Philly. It is located on a shopping plaza called Leo Mall next to K-mart right on Bustleton Ave. The restaurant is open in the evenings and Saturday is their busiest day. If you want to celebrate your birthday with your friends, make reservations in advance. This is also a nice place for smaller weddings, it can accomodate 150-200 people. The flower arrangements are very nice and the band is just great. Sometimes if your birthday is on a Sunday, you can have the whole restaurant just to yourself and the band will be playing and singing for your party. It is really a great experience. The food is very good: lots of fish dishes, caviar, herring, also chicken, pork, beef, different vegetable salads. They also have birthday cakes and they serve them in portions or you can bring your own and ask them to cut it. A lot of people know each other and this can be the only place they see each other in a while. Also everybody dresses up for the restaurant; women come in evening dresses, men wear suits.

215-684-7500, 215-783-8100

Open: 10 am – 5 pm Tuesday-Sunday
Closed major holidays
Entrance fee: $3.00 suggested contribution (but you can come in free as well)

This museum has the largest collection of Auguste Rodin’s sculptures outside of Paris. The works were collected by Jules E. Mastbaum, a movie theater magnate and one of Philadelphia’s most well-known philantropists. The museum building and garden were created by Paul Cret and Jacques Greber, 2 great French neoclassical architects. This collection has 127 sculptures, most famous of which are "The Thinker" which greets everybody at the entrance, "The Burghers of Calais", several sculptures of Balzac, "Eternal Spring" – a tribute to human love. The entrance to the museum is a large screen "The Gates of Hell" in bronze which was modeled after the façade of the Chateau d’Issy.

There is a gift shop that offers books and miniature copies of Rodin’s statues. Museum also offers guided tours. For the schedule call the museum.

This huge horticultural center spreads on the 1050 outdoor acres and has 20 indoor gardens. The estate dates back to 1700 and has a long history, but the creation of the gardens the way they are nowadays is the vision of Pierre du Pont who bought this estate in 1906. After his death the gardens were left for the public to enjoy.

There is certainly the influence of Versailles gardens in the way that trees and bushes are shaped, in the arches made of roses, in the cascading fountains. You can come here any month of the year and see the beauty of the seasonal plants and flowers. But the best things in the garden are the cascading fountains. You can see the new fountains joining the others with the streams of water in different directions, creating almost a surreal impression, as if you are not in the 21st century.

The gardens have exotic flowers in bloom throughout the year in the Conservatory. It has a large collection of palm trees, cacti, orchids, bonsais, and seasonal flowers. But the most beautiful part of the gardens for me is the ponds with water lilies full of different colors and shapes. The garden in front of the Conservatory has a large rosarium and trees shaped as birds, animals and geometrically. To the right there is a small garden with a tower. If you walk up the stairs to the top of the tower, you’ll be able to see most of the estate, and realize the grandeur of its size.

There is a gift shop at the entrance and you can get a map of the gardens when buying the tickets.

215-893-1999
www.philaorch.org

It is located in the Fairmount Park which in itself is a very nice place to visit. Mann is a summer theater and it hosts a variety of musical events spring through fall. It is most famous for its summer PNC Concert Series with the Philadelphia Orchestra that take place every summer from the end of June to the end of July. For four weeks every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday you can come here to listen to the music by Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Rossini, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Sibelius, Dvorak, Liszt, Strauss, and so on. Every summer one of the concerts is entirely devoted to Tchaikovsky and always end with "1812 Overture" and fireworks. Another concert consists of Broadway hits. The music is performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra with different conductors and such soloists as Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Andre Watts, Pamela Frank. Tickets can be bought at the Academy of Music Box office (Broad & Locust St.) or at the Mann Box office. There are seats under the roof and on the lawn. On the day of performance day and lawn tickets are $8. Parking is free on the street or you can park at the Mann Center parking for a fee.

This is the place where every summer and fall you can come and listen to jazz, or participate in various competitions or watch navy ships. Along the peers of the Delaware river there are lots of night clubs and dance clubs. One of them, Rocklobster has free ramba lessons every Thursday. There is also "Dave and Busters", where you can eat and shoot pool or play slots. This is also the place where you can see the fireworks during the New Year and Independence day. There is also an Independence Seaport Museum which doesn’t have much but shows some of the sea artifacts. The area right across Penn’s Landing, that is if you cross I-95 by the bridge on Chestnut St. is called Society Hill and is the most prestigious place to live in Philly. The real estate value here is the highest in the city. There are also 2 Ritz theaters within 4 block radius where you can see elite movies. If you choose to cross I-95 by another bridge on South St. several blocks down, you will find yourself in the area where young Philadelphians love to spend their Friday and Saturday evenings in the summer. There are night clubs here on every corner and nice restaurants and at 12 midnight this place has as many people as Market St. at lunch time.

phone: 215-923-1515

Tickets for a Saturday performance are usually difficult to get; I had to buy mine half a year in advance. For the performances during working days you might be able to get tickets two to three weeks in advance. The cheapest seats in the theater are the last three rows starting with N, and I found that they are the best seats in the house, since you can see and hear everything on the stage no matter where you are.

The theater is not very large. The building looks rather ordinary from the outside, but inside it is really interesting. The decorations are a mixture of Baroque and Art Deco. The ceiling has a large beautiful chandelier in the middle and a circular décor of flowers, vases and muses in green surrounding it. The walls have a combination of yellow, light green and beige colors, with vases shaped like Greek amphoras, fruits, flowers and women’s half bodies emerging from them. The same pattern is repeated in miniature on the corner seat of each row. The staircase leading to the top was also designed in the same style, and to get to the top you have to take the stairs, since there are no elevators. The lobby has several beautiful chandeliers and very high ceilings.

The seats, however, are rather small and uncomfortable, and several men had to sit in the aisle during the performance since they couldn’t fit into their seats. Another major drawback is that by the second act it got very hot and they never turned the air conditioning on.

I've seen two musicals here: "Mamma Mia" in February and Elton John’s "Aida" in June. I didn’t like the first one since the actors didn’t have the right voices and couldn’t perform Abba songs the way that they were sung by Abba. I partially liked Aida. I loved the decorations on the stage and the lighting, but the story line was rather simple, the musical too long, and the singers too tired by the end of the show.

1) If you need to get somewhere by public transportation call SEPTA at 215-580-7800 and they will get you the fastest route.
2) You can ride all day for $4.00 all over Center City on Phlash. It has its own website www.phillyphlash.com and you can check the bus stops. It is cheaper than public transportation and will bring you all the sightseeing places. Family Phlash Pass might be even cheaper: $10 all day (2 adults, 3 children under 18).
3) If you come to Philly by plane, SEPTA R-1 train will get you to Center City for $5.00 in 20 minutes. Much better deal than a taxi if you don't have much luggage.
4) Get Center City map in the visitor's bureau on 16th and JFK, it has different colors for different areas of the city so it's easier to find your locations.