Prowling my world, camera in hand

We spent the week in Pennsylvania with our son, enjoying the good weather and the big city as well as the small towns. We did make a day trip to Washington, though.

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Everyone who has visited the US knows that the flag is everywhere. I present three examples here. The first is from the apartment complex in Lansdale where my son lives:

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A more upscale Lansdale home:

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And in South Philadelphia:

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We drove down to Washington for a day, mainly to visit the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Air and Space Museum. It was my son’s idea to take my father WW2 victory medal and pose with it in the Remembrance Hall of the Holocaust museum:

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The front of the medal, with the Polish eagle:

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The back of the medal. The inscription reads “The Polish Republic-Victory and Freedom–9 May 1945”:

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We moved on to the Air and Space Museum:

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And then on to the memorials, starting with the Vietnam Memorial:

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The Lincoln Memorial, with a plane coming in to land at Reagan airport:

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Inside the Lincoln Memorial:

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The White House, not very accessible:

More images from Washington can be seen here.

The next several images are from the lovely small town Doylestown, a few miles from Lansdale.

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Doylestown boasts many interesting shops, among them a very well-stocked comics book store:

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Another typical Doylestown shop:

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Another day we spotted some positive messages someone had been leaving around the town:

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A façade from the past:

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Doylestown Brewing Company makes some delicious brews:

Now a few local pictures from Lansdale.

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My son at the wheel of his Mustang:

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The groundskeeper’s little tractor at the Lansdale apartment complex:

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The beer section of the local Wegmans supermarket. Compared to when we left the US 20 years ago, the beer scene here has exploded:

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The Smokehouse is a restaurant just a few minutes walk from Moses’s apartment:

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Their Buffalo wings were very good, although the “suicide” version I ordered was a misnomer; by Buffalo standards these were “medium”:

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One evening we went to see the Phillies against the Blue Jays. We enjoyed the experience, although we left after the 7th inning when it was clear that the Phillies were not going to come back from behind, training 8-5. They didn’t:

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Another day I went to South Philadelphia with my daughter to visit a piercing shop where she wanted to have some adjustments done. Already walking from the parking to the shop, I could see that this was an interesting neighbourhood:

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The neighbourhood is full of interesting signs and shop fronts:

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Even the traffic islands can be interesting. Note the hipster type walking down the street, a typical inhabitant of this part of the city:

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Tatoo parlour:

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The Pope is coming to visit Philaldephia in September. The merchants are ready:

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This is a wonderful little side street called Kater Street. I turned into this street and was met by a world of wonderful murals:

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There was also some kind of Buddhist temple:

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But most striking were the mosaics:

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At some point, this guy came out from one of the houses, and we had a brief chat. He told me that most of the mosaics I had just photographed were made by his father:

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I continued to wander through the neighbourhood, marvelling at the creativity expressed in the signs and street art:

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Fire station:

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Don’t smoke!:

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We then went north, to the area around City Hall and the Temple University Center City campus, where I took my MBA classes back in 1991-93. This is a completely different Philadelphia:

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I loved this sculpture by Claes Oldenburg:

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Urban fauna:

The final few images are from a Saturday drive to Amish country.

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We drove to Intercourse, supposedly the main Amish town in Lancaster county. Unsurprisingly, the town sign gets stolen from time to time:

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I found Intercourse a bit too Disneyfied. Clearly, the main business is to sell stuff to the tourists:

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These do not look like Amish handycrafts:

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Nothing for my vegan daughter in this shop:

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The buggies are used for individual transport, but also to give tours to visitors:

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That is what the landscape around Intercourse looks like:

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The most traditional among the Amish do not use electricity, so clotheslines are a more common sight than elsewhere in rural America:

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Mailboxes at the roadside: