philadelphia: the cheese steak state

we rounded off my visit with a tour of the second largest shopping mall in the united states 'the king of prussia'. hardcore america right there.

i am forever indebted to jenny and justin for introducing me to smores. oh my. they even had a special indoor marshmallow toaster. i don't think i can openly confess to the amount of smores that i consumed. needless to say, within seconds of my first mouthful, i was trying to figure out what i could substitute for graham crackers once i return to the emerald isle.

it started to rain so we ducked into parc and had a few beers and waited it out.

the rosenback museum and library was another very worthy pit stop.

http://www.rosenbach.org/ . where we saw some hand written pages of ulysses, the day after bloomsday. we stumbled upon a gallery showing the work of the students of the yale mfa photography course http://www.gallery339.com/ .

i had philly cheese steak at jim's. i had mine with whiz cheese (is it even a dairy product?)

when we did our cultural put stops they were most worthy. at the raymond and perelman building at the philadelphia art museum we saw the photography of daido moriyama and a fashion exhibition entitled 'shopping in paris: french fashion 1850-1925'. heaven. our trip was not complete without a walk up the most famous rocky steps.

overheard (on walking up the steps) 'my life is complete right now'.

a quick jaunt in the direction of the boat house completed that part of town.

thus far philadelphia takes the proverbial biscuit for regional food sampling. me and jenny started as we meant to go on: mac and cheese at delilah's (best in usa according to oprah!) the first stop on our culinary tour de force. our days were planned around our meals and we fitted cultural events in between meals.