very simple

I went to Philadelphia last weekend for my twentieth (!!) law school reunion, and in between the multiple parties and recuperative naps, I obviously wandered around town and took some pictures. This is the always fantastic sign for the reading terminal market, which is hard to photograph because it is wedged directly across a narrow intersection and behind this annoying streetlight.

I don’t think my distaste for New York’s Penn Station is any secret, but it only gets emphasized when I get to spend time in other train stations that are more beautiful. Obviously, here in NYC, Grand Central and the new Oculus are great spaces (and vastly different to each other), but other cities still have beautiful Amtrak stations.

I took a short trip to Philly this summer to visit friends, the weekend before the DNC, and so 30th street was at its shiniest, spiffiest best. This is one of my favorite stations – sure Amtrak does its best to muck things up with its standardized modern signage that makes zero effort to blend with the classic art deco building, but it’s still OK.

The weekend before Memorial Day was my law school reunion. 15 years (gasp!). It was tons of fun, and compared to last time, much less anxiety-inducing (I had gotten laid off from my job only three months before my 10-year reunion, so the “what are you doing now” questions were a little awkward). I didn’t take many pictures of the festivities, because I was having too much fun in the enjoyment of them, but Saturday morning I walked up to the new Barnes Foundation and took a few shots.

not really, but this is definitely weird.

A few years ago, I thought it was incredibly fortuitous timing that they published a travel article on spending the weekend in Paris mere days before I went to Paris. crazy, convenient coincidence, right?

But now it’s just getting creepy. I’m going to Philly next weekend for my 10-year law school reunion, and what do they publish this morning? Yep…36 hours in Philadelphia.

In all seriousness though, I’m not sure why they thought it was a good idea to encourage people to visit philadelphia in mid-may, which is the height of graduation/reunion frenzy. The few remaining hotels that aren’t booked solid are probably either incredibly sketchy or have super-exorbitant prices. But I’ll probably print out the ideas on the off-chance that I’ve got some downtime somewhere in my reunion-weekend schedule.

So my law school reunion turned out to be pretty fun. I was actually surprised at how happy I was to see people that I really hadn’t thought about in a while. Everyone who showed up appeared to be doing pretty well, with several folks married, some new babies (and some more on the way), and the usual complaints about working too many hours.

I will admit to bailing (along with several others) once the pub crawling started in earnest – some things I will happily admit to actually being too old for these days.

Going to Philadelphia this weekend, for my five-year law school reunion. I really can’t believe that I’ve been out of school for that long. I’m getting old…