Philadelphia in Transit to Amsterdam, June 2017

Philadelphia's Chinatown at Friendship Gate, 10th and Arch Street. About the size of Greektown in Detroit, there's been an Asian core magnet here for something like 150 years. This is close to the Reading Market and the Convention Center. 

Moriarty's Irish Pub & Restaurant, 1116 Walnut Street (at Quince, from which point this side shot was taken). The building is 187 years old (built in 1830). Incidentally, Moriarty is one of my ancestral names. 

Sometime after I moved from my tiny 12th and Spruce garret apartment, Amy Winehouse ducked into Moriarty's for a drink. That would have been something to behold! 

1218 Spruce Street, built in or around 1840. Now the Philadelphia Bridal Company, in the 1990s this was Nga Mai's Café Diva. I lived across the street at 1225 Spruce, drank a lot of coffee here, and also I occasionally covered for Nga, or played chess. Not sure why there's a large "PODS" unit in front -- an alien sleeping unit, perhaps?

Reflecting pool on the grounds of the Barnes Foundation at 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway. This is a stellar art museum. Its holdings were relocated from Lower Merion (a Philadelphia suburb on the Main Line) to here in 2012. 

Note: images taken with a mobile phone, nothing fancy. 

Today's Rune: Initiation.