Back home on Amtrak tomorrow, so I wanted to get these pics up (you know the routine by now: click the pic to view the whole album). I really didn’t have anything specific in mind this morning and it was close to noon, so I’d done a little googlemapping for Indian places nearby. I found one I thought sounded like it might be good, and headed a block down to 46th. I guess I looked at the addy for the wrong Indian place, cause I found the one that didn’t look so hot on the web, and looked even worse in person. Dingy. Dirty. Nasty. I said to myself, “Self, you don’t want to eat there,” and went back up the street. There was a Chinese place that didn’t look bad, something Shanghai, and the menu was okay, so I decided to lunch there.

My first clue that maybe it wasn’t the best idea was when I walked in and saw that all of the tables were set with silverware. Now I use silverware. If you like chopsticks, great, but I don’t. Still, in a city with a huge Asian population, tables set with silverware means, “Chinese folks don’t eat here.”

I was already there, so it was too late. I hesitated between an eastern Chinese pork in brown sauce and the chow mian, and I decided on the latter. I don’t know if it was a mistake, since I don’t know if the pork would have been better, but I could have had it for dessert. Anyway, lunch not so good.

Just across the street is that more-Catholic-than-the-Pope Anglican church, St. Mary the Virgin, and Mass was just letting out, so I went in. Pretty church. I took a few pics (they’re dark, of course), then on a whim, headed to Grand Central.

As far as I’m concerned, Grand Central Terminal is the gem of the city. It’s like a time machine. It looks exactly like it did during WW2. Beautiful building. I took a bunch of pictures.

I then headed down 5th Avenue to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I took a bunch of pictures there, too, but of course, they’re very dark. I did what I could with them. I took a picture of a notice because I was shocked (and a bit disgusted) that it needed to be said. The notice read:

“Welcome. Saint Patrick’s Cathedral is an historic landmark and a sacred place. Visitors are kindly requested to behave with reverence and respectful silence. Out of deference for the house of God, proper dress is required of all who enter. During services, tourist groups are respectfully asked to refrain from touring the cathedral or taking photographs.”

What does it say about us as a society that a plaque needs to be put up — or that any of this needs to be said?

Click the pic to view the album (the first church pictures are St. Mary the Virgin, and the larger group at the end are St. Patrick’s).

I visited Ground Zero. I’m still to angry, disgusted, and ashamed to post about it — but I will. Click on the pic to see the whole album.

That Western-civilization-hating GaiaGoddessLoons who demand that we all to back to 4,000 B.C. live in New York City, or that they set up their nutty booths in Lincoln Center?

And here are a few New Yorkers in their quaint, native costumes.

Piccys get biggy if you clicky.

You know, when you see something and your immediate reaction is, “I doubt it,” or “I don’t think so.” We’ve had several here in New York. Saturday night on our way back to the hotel, we walked past a storefront with the sign, “Amish Market” on the front.

Uh, I doubt it. I strongly suspect that at least 99.9% of New Yorkers have never seen one of the plain people, unless you count that Harrison Ford movie, Witness. About the closest New York has to Anabaptists are Orthodox Jews. We’ve seen a lot of them. Somehow, we haven’t seen any Amish in buggies. Imagine that.

Tomorrow, by the way, is the anniversary of the Nickel Mines shooting.

On our way to lunch yesterday, we walked past some “southern barbecue” place, with such items on the posted menu as “boneless chicken fingers in mango barbecue sauce.” Uh, I don’t think so. Then again, how many New Yorkers have been south of the Mason-Dixon line (DC doesn’t count), much less eaten the real thing?

Then, in front of a very narrow, trash-strewn set of stairs leading up into a dirty building, there was a sign that said, “Best Chinese food,” beneath a naked Chinese woman. Somehow, I don’t think food was what they were selling there.

Including food pics I shamelessly took yesterday (click on the pic to view the whole album):

Also note the pics of New Yorkers in their quaint native garb.

The hotel has complimentary breakfasts, but only on weekdays, and since this is New York, they’re not really breakfasts. They’re “Continental” breakfasts, you know, a little sweet roll. Obviously, we haven’t tried yet, since this is our first weekday here.

But unlike our experience in Philadelphia, we’ve had a run of good luck here. So far. Knock on wood.

Friday night: Havana Central (Times Square), within easy walking distance. Deafening (and you’d expect a Cuban bar and restaurant to be quiet?), but great food. I had the arroz con pollo, because I needed something comforting after that long train ride. Cuban comfort food at its best.

Saturday: Aïda was at 1:30, so we needed to lunch somewhere close to Lincoln Center, and found Rosa Mexicano. The lunch menu is mostly northern and central Mexican, and the food is top notch. Even the black beans were so good you wanted to dive into the bowl. Excellent guacamole, which they make tableside — do note that they make it exactly as I do, with no lime. I got the carne asada tacos, which were brilliantly done. Everything was delicious. The pinto beans. The saffron rice. The homemade tortillas. And the carne asada, charbroiled and rare, with chihuahua cheese. Uncommonly friendly staff for New York, then, he was a Mexican. He suggested that we try Maya while we were in town (see below). Rosa Mexicano is right across from the back end of the New York City Opera.

Zarela Martinez has published a couple of excellent cookbooks, so when I saw she had a restaurant in Manhattan, going was a done deal. And who can resist a restaurant whose tagline is Praise the Lard? The menu is, as I assumed from her cookbooks, mostly Oaxacan, although there are a couple of Yucatecan items. Despite the fact that my favorite Mexican is Oaxacan, the chile relleno del día was chile en nogada (central Mexican), a poblano stuffed with picadillo (shredded pork in a chipotle sauce with various fruits and nuts, in this case, apricots, raisins, pears, almonds, and walnuts) and coated with a creamy walnut and pomegranate sauce. I got the cochinita pibil, a Yucatecan specialty, and it was memorable.

Sunday: Another performance to attend at Lincoln Center, but at 3:00, so we were free to find lunch anywhere we wanted. As you know, there’s a dearth of edible Chinese back home, and we wanted good Chinese while we were here, but alas, we are quite a ways from Chinatown, too far, certainly, to have gone, then been to Lincoln Center by 3:00 (there’s a place in Chinatown with an irresistibly colorful menu, including things like Amazing Chicken and Incredible Beef Organ). I did a little research, and found several local food forums — and that the consensus was that the best Szechuan in Manhattan was at a little place just five blocks down the street from the hotel, at the Szechuan Gourmet, on 39th. What clinched it for me was one reviewer’s statement about the dan-dan noodles: “Delicious and fiery hot! It’s like eating electricity!” So off we went.

Four Rivers:Phildaelphia::Szechuan Gourmet:Manhattan

I’d say “authentic” just about sums it up. There were more than a few items most would find exotic, and it’s a big menu. Rabbit in black bean chili sauce. Braised intestine. Stir-fried chili duck tongues. I got the dan-dan noodles (how could I not, after that comment) and “double cooked pork belly with chili leek” (twice-cooked pork). The noodles were indeed fiery, though I thought “eating electricity” was an overstatement until I had my first spoonful of broth. 97% chili, and 3% other, with noodles, mustard greens, and finely diced pork. And loads of garlic.

The twice-cooked pork was the best I’ve had, and I’ve had some exemplary twice-cooked pork. It really was pork belly, hard to find in the US because we make nearly all of it into bacon, in paper-thin slices. It, too, was quite spicy, though not so spicy as the dan-dan noodles, with a splash of vinegar to sharpen it, and many leeks. I may head there again today for lunch, since I have no plans until this evening.

The restaurant business is about as cut throat as it gets, so when the staff at one restaurant recommends a competitor, it’s a good idea to follow up. We headed to Maya last night (it ain’t close — we took a cab). It’s so far the most expensive place we’ve encountered, and unlike the other two Mexican restaurants we had visited, it’s “modern” Mexican. Usually, that’s a big red light, with lots of fusion silliness, but not at Maya. The roasted corn soup was, well, there just aren’t words to describe it. The mole poblano was excellent, served over chicken, all on cilantro rice with fried plantains. Expensive, but lots of food — I couldn’t finish before I pushed the plate away and sat there groaning in pain.

I’ve heard from far too many people far too many times that good Mexican is nearly impossible to find in New York City. I don’t think it’s wise to press our luck. If we do Mexican again, we’ll probably go back to one of the places we’ve visited, rather than search out another.

There are two days left before we head back. Just a couple of blocks away is Little Brazil Way, a whole street of Brazilian restaurants. That’s certainly an intriguing idea. Or because of the lack of good Chinese back in Centre County, we may do the Szechuan Gourmet again. Or who knows?

Pics to follow. Some of these things were so pretty I had to take pictures.

Oh, and there’s a breakfast place down the street. Not to disparage anyone or any ethnic group, but lox and bagels just aren’t my idea of breakfast. I suspect we’ll have to do without.

I’m putting these below the fold. Click the pic to get full size.

Yesterday was the Met performance: Aïda, with Angela Brown singing Aïda to Dolora Zajick’s Amneris. First, we went to the JP Morgan Library to see the library and another exhibit. I realized I had forgotten the camera, so we walked back to the hotel. We then began a leisurely stroll toward Lincoln Center (more about lunch and dinner later). After the performance, we walked to Zarela, where we had reservations for dinner.

Note the repetition of the verb, “walk.” Feet much sore at end of day.

Individual photos with comments to appear momentarily. Click on the pic below to view the entire album:

Last day, Gettysburg. Click on the pic to see the whole album:

The third day, and the King Tut exhibit. Click on the pic to see the whole album:

Second day. Not so historic Philadelphia (not counting Geno’s, that is). Click on the pic to see the entire album:

First full day in Philadelphia. Historic Philadelphia. Click on the pic to see the entire album:

The Philadelphia trip. First stop: Valley Forge. Click the pic to see the whole album:

Charleston, South Carolina. Click on the pic to see the whole album:

While touring historical sites, we ran into multiple instances of adults either being idiots or forgetting what it was like to be a kid (take your pick). For example:

• Two boys, probably 10 or 11, were bored to tears in the Valley Forge historical museum. A couple of adults, directly behind my right shoulder, talked about what ungrateful little brats they were.
• At Gettysburg, there was a man dragging his kid (I’d estimate about 14) around to look at monuments. They kid was so bored he was playing with sticks — and swinging from one monument (and his father, who was the one who wanted to be there, apparently didn’t find that a problem).
• Another father was yelling at his kids at Gettysburg because they were bored.

What’s wrong with these people? Have they completely forgotten what it was like to be a kid? Sure, I know how important all of those historical sites are, but I’m not a kid anymore. Why would they bore their kids by dragging them around to see something they’re not capable of appreciating?

Teach kids history in a way they’ll appreciate. Tell them the stories. Get them historical or military strategy games. Buy them action figures, and use them to tell these kids what’s behind them. But don’t drag your kids around to look at memorials. There isn’t a better way to make them hate history.

“Peace Eternal in a Nation United”
–Inscibed across the base of the memorial

From the placard:

Veterans of the Union and Confederate armies from across the nation converged on Gettysburg in 1938 — 75 years after the battle — for their last great reunion. All Civil War veterans were invited with expenses paid, and nearly 2,000 attended. The majority were in their 90s, and many were over 100.

At President Roosevelt’s signal, the flag shrouding the monument was lowered into the arms of a Union veteran and a Confederate veteran. It was the last great “hurrah” for the old soldiers.

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1 through July 3, 1863, in the area of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In this one battle, 7,708 men were killed, 26,856 were wounded, and 10,800 were missing or captured. In this one battle, there were 45,364 casualties on both sides.

In one battle.

It’s about 70 miles out of the way, but it should be worth it. Gettysburg is, on this route, almost to the mile halfway home (if we weren’t stopping at Gettysburg, we’d just go directly to Harrisburg, then take 322 back over the mountains).

There will be lots of pictures (it’s supposed to be mostly sunny today in Gettysburg), but I’m quite sure I won’t even think of uploading any until tomorrow. I suspect once we get back home, get something to eat, and pick up the dogs I will want to lounge and see what’s on TiVO.

More about the trip in the next few days.

While the character of Manhattan is distinctly feminine, Chicago is unabashedly masculine. Chicago has plenty of posh, but stroll down Michigan Avenue, and you’ll see as many people in Bears jerseys as fur coats. Chicago is the city of “da Bears” and Mike Ditka. Chicago is the city of steak and chop houses.

When Chicago does hoity-toity, it’s always a bit uncomfortable, as if it doesn’t fit the local culture. Pinkie-up in Chicago is a little louder, a little brasher, a little more informal than posh in more formal cities.

After a 50% hit rate on restaurants, we played our last meal here safe, and went to Morton’s of Chicago The Steakhouse on Walnut.

Morton’s is one of Chicago’s more pinkie-up steakhouses, on Wacker Drive. Wacker follows the Chicago River and wraps the downtown business district with gleaming white limestone and glass buildings clad with sparkling stainless steel art deco sconces and sculptures. Downtown is posh, but in a way that says Chicagoans are proud of their city and architecture. You won’t find even a fingerprint smudge on one of those sconces. Wacker Drive gleams.

Morton’s of Chicago has expanded, and is now Morton’s The Steakhouse. If you’re a carnivore and you want top-notch steak — and you’re willing to pay for it — this is your restaurant.

The specialty is the Chicago-style (bone-in) ribeye.

Morton’s here is, like the Chicago original, Chicago posh, and not Manhattan posh. You’ll find tables full of businessmen (and women) discussing everything from Wall Street to football. The restaurant here looks very much like the original, with dark walnut walls and a brick wine display.

We knew what to expect, and soon, the cart rolled up to the table. I don’t remember a paper menu from eating at the original (there could have been one), but the waiter rolls a cart up to the table, with all the available main courses. Lobsters. Steaks. Chops. Fish.

I was a bit amused to see the creamed spinach on the menu as one of the sides. Creamed spinach is on the menu of every steakhouse in Chicago. Apparently, when Morton’s expanded they kept it on the menu — and it’s extremely good, by the way.

As expected, the food was reliably top-notch. Be aware that they know what “rare” means at Morton’s. You won’t get medium rare. It’s not even warm inside. Order rare, and that’s exactly what you get.

Pricey, but worth it. Posh, but Chicago posh. If you live in Philadelphia, or one of the cities where there is a Morton’s, you really should check it out sometime, and discover why Chicago is the city of steaks and chops.

1,263 years before Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, but 1,242 years after the Giza pyramids were built.

It’s rather awe-inspiring to realize that less time has passed between the present and Cleopatra than there is between Cleopatra and the Giza pyramids. To Cleopatra the pyramids were far older than she is to us.

We switched hotels, so we’re several blocks west of where we were and a couple of streets down, not far from Rittenhouse Square. We decided to walk Restaurant Row (Walnut) and find someplace to eat.

We ate at Passage to India, at Juniper. I can sum up the entire eating experience, review, and recommendation in one word.

Don’t.

However, directly across Walnut is the Naked Chocolate Cafe, and who could resist that, particularly after an unpleasant meal?

When you walk in, candies fill the case on your right, but as you walk along it, candies give way first to streusels, cookies, and cupcakes, then to tarts and cakes. I immediately fastened on the Apple Caramel Tart, then turned toward the drink menu.

In addition to coffees, they have chocolate, in five categories. There’s the original, bittersweet, Aztec (with cloves and so forth), spicy (looked like it had some chili in it), and “our richest chocolate,” the sipping chocolate. All were available in three sizes: petit, decadent, and “we’ll never tell.”

I asked for the bittersweet in “we’ll never tell,” and she asked me if I’d ever had it because it was very rich. I downgraded to the decadent size, and that turned out to be a good thing.

This was no silly, half-inch French apple tart. Apples were mounded a good three inches above the top of the shell, and if you love apples, you’ll love this. They were topped with caramel syrup and a streusel topping of brown sugar, cinnamon, and rolled oats.

But the chocolate, topped with a huge mound of whipped cream, was not the cocoa I’d expected. I hadn’t thought anything of the fact she’d given me a spoon, because well, don’t they usually these days? I found, however, that this wasn’t cocoa. The chocolate was almost the consistency of hot fudge. If you melted a bar of 70% Valrhona and poured it into a mug, it would closely approximate what I was served.

In other words, this stuff will throw you into a chocolate coma.

Unpleasant meal, incredible dessert.

Lunch at Geno’s with celebrities. Pics here.

It’s 52 right now back home in the mountains. It’s 71 here in Philadelphia now.

Today, we switch hotels, then I head to Geno’s for a gunblogger lunch with Wyatt, Sebastian, and Bitter. After that, no plans yet.

Apparently, we’re missing a big crime wave back in Centre County.

Friday evening

Friday night we were tired, and didn’t have much time to do any research, so we made a serious error and relied on the blurbs in the hotel magazine. We ended up just around the corner at El Vez.

When a “review” of a restaurant includes descriptions such as, “hip, young, brash,” it’s a good idea to stay far away, but like I said, we were tired and hungry.

It was obnoxiously loud, so loud I couldn’t hear the waitress. It was full of people on cell phones, which I couldn’t figure, since I couldn’t hear myself think. But yuppies on cell phones is another good indicator to stay away.

El Vez is supposed to be a Mexican restaurant, and their speciality is supposed to be guacamole. It turns out they do six or seven “specialty guacamoles,” another indicator that we should have left.

We ordered the “original.”

It came in a molcajete, with chips and a red salsa. I give them points for actually making the guacamole when we ordered it. It was cool, not cold, and chunky. It would have been very good, had it had more cilantro and less lime. As it was, the lime overpowered everything, including the avocado.

And folks, this is exactly why I strenuously object to citrus juice in guacamole. Lime was the predominant flavor. Citrus easily cloaks the rich avocado, which is supposed to dominate guacamole. But at least it wasn’t the ice cold, perfectly smooth nastiness most restaurants serve.

The tortilla soup, like the guacamole, easily could have been very good, but for one flaw. It was, for normal palates, inedibly salty. I know this because I like my food saltier than 99% of the population, and the soup teetered right on the upper limit of saltiness for me.

The carne asada was excellent, thinly sliced and done just as I had asked, served over the house version of rojas, sliced roasted poblanos and (there) mushrooms, and drizzled with a guajillo sauce. I grudgingly applaud them for the asada, but everything else, well, not so great.

The final insult came with the check, at just under a hundred bucks, about the same as a meal at the Frontera Grill in Chicago would have cost.

Folks, this ain’t the Frontera, and the chef at El Vez ain’t Rick Bayless. You will never forget a meal you have at Frontera, because everything is memorable, and it’s well worth the expense. El Vez is, in my opinion, a waste of money.

Saturday

We did the historic district, beginning around 8:30 am, and had three places in mind for lunch. We walked past the tapas bar and cuban restaurant and decided to to to Karma, the Indian restaurant for lunch.

All I can say is everything I had off the buffet was extremely good. Karma is on Chestnut, almost all the way to the Delaware, and I recommend it if you’re in the area.

I’ve bitched enough about Chinese in Centre County that it shouldn’t be surprising that we wanted to go to Chinatown (just up the street from the hotel) for dinner. The question was where, given that there are probably over five hundred restaurants in Chinatown. We ruled out anything southeast Asian (Thai, Malaysian, Burmese, Vietnamese), only because we can get pretty good Thai food at home. But that still left hundreds of choices.

We kept seeing the URL for Chinatown splashed all over signs as we walked past the edge, so when we got back to the hotel, I pulled it up.

Somebody really needs to work on this website. The first problem is only about fifteen restaurants are listed. The second problem is that most of the links don’t work. And the third problem is, well, here’s a quotation so you can see for yourself:

Sichuanese cook in lawei pots heaped with chilies and prickly ash. Food cooked a short time in lawei pots is mellow, but as the night wears on and long forgotten entrails are dredged up, mouths numb and patrons sweat.

Good for amusement value, but not every informative. So I used Google and found this review and discussion of Four Rivers. This line in particular caught my eye:

My wife made me bring this dish back to San Francisco every time I went back to Philadelphia.

I don’t know if you know this, but despite all its other flaws and weirdnesses, San Francisco has incredibly good restaurants, particularly Chinese. It also seemed from the reviews that Four Rivers might be a real Szechuan restaurant, one thing they did not have in San Francisco when I have been there (though they have just about everything else, including real Hunanese restaurants). So Four Rivers it was.

The Chinese no more make or eat food from other regions than anyone else on the planet, so why anyone would expect a restaurant staffed by Cantonese to know how to make Szechuan or Hunanese food, I do not understand. My rule for Chinese restaurants is order what they know how to make.

Usually, this is Cantonese. There are quite a few northern Chinese restaurants, but not many western Chinese. Four Rivers is a Szechuan restaurant.

My first clue was that I saw things on the menu I had seen in Szechuan cookbooks, but never on a menu, and no Cantonese or northern Chinese dishes. We ordered Chengdu Chicken, Chicken in basil, and after I asked what it was, Hunan Pork.

The Chengdu was the first to arrive, and it looked deadly, thinly coated with a bright orange sauce, with flecks of bright red chilis everywhere. Looks were deceiving. Oh, it was spicy, but not as spicy as it looked. Chicken, green onions, garlic, chilis, vinegar, and Szechuan peppercorns, no detectable sweetness or cornstarch. It was remarkably delicious, one of those things you’ll remember all your life. The chicken in basil came next, and it was likewise memorable. Chicken with carrots, broccoli, and peppers, with sesame paste and basil leaves. It was not spicy, but it was excellent. The Hunan pork came next, in a rich black bean sauce. It was extremely good, though it was not so much better than what you could get elsewhere that it stood out.

Perhaps the rule for Chinese restaurants applies to Szechuan and Hunan: Don’t order Hunanese at a Szechuan restaurant.

We got a lot of food, far more than we could have eaten. And here’s the zinger: three huge dishes full of three entrees, two of them so amazingly good we’ll never forget them, cost only thirty-four bucks.

Four Rivers is excellent, and I highly recommend it to anyone who finds himself in Philadelphia. It’s just a door on Race Street in Chinatown, and up a flight of stairs. It’s small, there is little decor, the floor is very old linoleum, and only one of the staff when we were there spoke or understood any English. But God, what food.

We’ll definitely eat there the next time we come to Philly.

The room in Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Federation, and the Constitution were adopted.

Did the historic district. Pics are here. Again, no moonbats demanding reparations for Brits.

Ate lunch at Karma, an Indian restaurant. Very good (better than the place we ate dinner at last night, and shelled out 100 bucks for). Should you find yourself on Chestnut almost to the river in Philadelphia, I highly recommend it.

It’s about the same distance from home to Philadelphia as it is from Bloomington to Chicago, but it’s a very different drive. The glacier line is about twenty miles north of Bloomington, so from that point north, the drive is level — see for miles and miles in all directions level (and boring, a lot like driving across Ohio boring). But driving to Chicago you can make really good time (I once did it in 2 1/2 hours without realizing it).

You can’t really haul ass much from Happy Valley to Philadelphia, unless I suppose you’re used to careening up and down mountains. Between Happy Valley and Harrisburg, there are stretches where the highway runs along the valley, but most of that part of the drive is either climbing or descending a mountain ridge, until you get to the Susquehanna (and Harrisburg, in the Susquehanna Valley).

There’s only one, by the way, that really makes me nervous: Bald Eagle in Centre County, only about fifteen minutes into the trip. You know how I am about heights.

We’ve taken the highway as far as Harrisburg (and Hershey) before, so we knew what to expect. It’s a beautiful drive (except for the highway near Harrisburg, which reminds me of driving around Knoxville).

At Harrisburg, we caught the Turnpike and since it was just before noon and check-in here wasn’t until 3 pm, we went to Valley Forge, just 18 miles north of Philadelphia.

From Harrisburg, for a while the drive is comparatively level (hills, like driving through southern Indiana, but no mountains), but then it starts to descend. It seems like driving downhill almost all the way to Valley Forge (or Philadelphia).

That means, of course, that the first leg of the trip back will be uphill. Once we get out of the Susquehanna Valley, then it will be up the mountain, down the mountain, over and over again, like the trip down here.

The one thing that made the trip annoying was on our way from Valley Forge to Philadelphia on the Turnpike. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper, with almost no movement. It took us 45 minutes to get five miles. It turned out that there had been a wreck in front of us. Anyway, we were on the road for an hour and a half driving the 18 miles from Valley Forge to Philadelphia.

Had we not stopped at Valley Forge, and had there been no wreck on the Turnpike, it should have taken us four hours to get here.

I might add that the Turnpike east of I-99 is in much better condition than the rest — and because it’s not continually climbing or descending the side of a mountain ridge, there is actually a shoulder on the road. Parts of the Turnpike are even smooth.

Today, the historic district. You know, Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, that sort of thing. If we can get in, that is. Sunday, Geno’s. King Tut, probably Monday. I strongly suspect that cameras will not be allowed in the King Tut exhibit, but I’ll take the camera just in case.

Tuesday, back to Happy Valley.

Valley Forge photos are here.

Disclaimer: The Revolutionary War was over two hundred years ago. This is not meant in any way as an anti-British diatribe. We got over that a long time ago.

I’m quite happy to report that Valley Forge is moonbat-free. You’ll recall that the Ft. Sumter museum (the national park service museum on the mainland, not the museum on Ft. Sumter) was one big guilt-ridden moonbatfest. Well, the closest thing to moonbatty at Valley Forge was one exhibit at the Welcome Center that listed the roles of Catholics, blacks, American Indians, and other groups to the Revolutionary War, and I wouldn’t call that moonbatty at all.

I’m not sure what that means. Perhaps Americans across the political spectrum agree that Patriots good, Tories bad. After all, if the AmeriKKKa-is-EVIL! leftists didn’t agree on that basic premise, then wouldn’t they be agitating for us to join the Commonwealth, or apologize to Britain, or something like that? Or am I attributing too much thought to the left here?

At any rate, there is no disingenuous attempt to be “objective” at Valley Forge. Thank God.

I even documented proof. See these pics (I’ll upload more later). I guess nobody from the Brady Bunch or other gun-control groups has ever been to Valley Forge. Nobody from the DNC either, I guess, or somebody would have demanded “equal time” or “fairness” on the bookshelves, and Howard Zinn or some such bed-wetting author would be represented.

More pics later.

I’m starving. I’m tired. I’m only going to briefly make a few points which I’ll elaborate on tomorrow morning:

• Valley Forge is huge. You could go early in the morning and spend all day there.
• The first two hours of the trip is up the mountain, down the mountain, up the mountain, down the mountain. It gets comparatively level when you get to the Susquehanna and Harrisburg, but only for a while. The rest of the trip is downhill. All the way until you get almost to Philadelphia.
• I’m starving. (Did I say that already?)
• Lots of pictures, but none online until the morning.
• Going to Gettysburg on the way back.
• Think of it as a history trip:
  • Valley Forge
  • Philadelphia
  • King Tut
  • Gettysburg
• Time to find something to eat.

Proof. View from the room — William Penn peeing off the top of the courthouse (if you’re at the right angle):

I collect regional cookbooks (and recipes). I love those cookbooks printed by church or social groups, and if I do go into an antique store, I look for the books (antique stores are great places to find old, out of print, church cookbooks). When I travel, I rarely come back without a regional cookbook.

I looked in Charleston. There was a book store just down the street, and I looked there. All of the cookbooks billed as regional weren’t. There were Charleston’s favorite chef’s favorite recipes cookbooks, you know, with recipes that were in no way regional. You’d be just as likely to find those sorts of recipes billed as “regional” in San Francisco, Chicago, or Portsmouth. I ran into the same everywhere I looked.

After we got back from the Fort Sumter trip, we had just under two hours before the performance, so we didn’t have enough time to see the WW2 museum on the Yorktown. Next door was the aquarium, and if you see Fort Sumter you get free admission to the aquarium, so that’s where we went.

In the gift shop, there was a large cookbook section, and again, they were all silly foo-foo recipe collections — except one: Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking, edited by Blanche Salley Rhett. There a quite a lot of old recipes — and I mean old. One calls for bitter almonds (they’re illegal here, since they contain cyanide, but only bitter almonds have that characteristic intense almond flavor). There are recipes for corn bread, and something called batter bread, which looks like what I know as spoon bread. There are three or four recipes for Lady Baltimore cake, and of course, she-crab soup. Then, there are passages like these:

There were a dozen Negroes around the place, serving, cooking, singing, and dancing, and every few minutes, Dr. Adams would should into the kitchen, “Stop that cooking and come in and sing something!” So the Negroes would shift back and forth, to their own perfect delight, from cooking to dancing, from singing to serving.

Frankly, I’m surprised they weren’t forced to edit those old passages. But regional? It certainly is, and I plan to explore it in the kitchen. My question, though, is why authentic regional cookbooks are so hard to find. Why would you publish the recipes of some yankee chef who works in a popular restaurant and call it a regional or authentic cookbook? And is anybody stupid enough to look through a cookbook billed as regional, seeing pictures of nouvelle cuisine nonsense arranged in a little tower on a plate, and believe there is anything regional or authentic about it?

We stumbled upon this just down the street from the Old Market, right around the corner from where we were staying:

We watched the episodes on TiVO after we got back. You know, the altruistic stuff is great, but that’s all Discovery has run since they gave Trademark their own show, and I’d like to know when they’re going to get back to business.

By the way, I watched My War Diary for the first time yesterday. I give it a thumbs-up.

There was no evidence of this in Charleston (in fact, there was no evidence of moonbattiness at all). It’s just as well, or I wouldn’t have been able to eat those ribs.

Not work safe, by the way. Will definitely induce laughter, and perhaps, nausea. You’ve been warned.

When did the birkenstock crowd get put in charge of the National Park Service? I ask because of the quotations on display in Liberty Mall outside the entrance to the Fort Sumter museum. Quotations are appropriate, of course, but there isn’t a single quotation from the Founding Fathers, or anyone who had anything to do with the Civil War on either side. No, the quotations could have been pulled from any left-wing “literature” book. The most annoying thing, however, was at the end of the boat trip. There was a local NPS employee who gave a historical overview of the events that led up to the shelling of Fort Sumter (and the first shots of the Civil War), who was obviously not reading from a script until the very end, when he said something that could have been a third grade asssignment, “Read the quotations in the Liberty Mall and think about what liberty means to you.”

Oh for chrissakes, who let the kindergarten teacher write the script? What trivial, subjective drivel. “What liberty means to you” is right down there on the idiotic topics list with “What three things to you miss most about your home country.” Liberty isn’t a subjective feeling. No doubt to Ted Bundy, liberty would have meant the freedom to murder as many coeds as he wanted without being executed for it.

Look. Not everything needs to be reduced and trivialized to some inane, banal, meaningless subjective soundbyte. History isn’t about how you feel, or what something means to you. History is far bigger than you, or your feelings, or your subjective thoughts. History is about people, tribes, movements, and nations, not you or me.

I hated history in school–in fact, it was the only class I hated. I hated it because when we were in school, it was nothing but a series of names and dates and places, with no context. It wasn’t boring: It was deadly. Later, when I wished history had more of a human element, I certainly didn’t mean reductionist, narcissistic, feel-good idiocy like “Think about what liberty means to you.”

Quite some time ago (ahem), the Instructivist posted an article dealing with this issue of history qua history v. history qua “my oppressed little narrative.” I was reminded of this article–and the issue–during the trip to Fort Sumter, which turned out not only to be a history lesson, but a lesson in history education.

You walk through the Liberty Mall to the National Park Service (NPS) museum, where you buy your ticket. It’s largely useless, at least as any kind of historical documentation. It’s the standard reductionist party line about the Civil War. Every display is King Cotton blah blah blah blah Slavery blah blah blah blah. It’s what we’ve all heard several thousand times at least, with almost no substance or detail.

You walk out the other side of the museum and get on the boat, which takes you out to the fort. As I said, there’s a local NPS employee who talks about the historical issues that led up to the first shots of the Civil War. He gives much more detail and substance than the museum, despite the solidly pro-Confederate perspective (unlike the solidly anti-Confederate perspective of the museum).

When you get to the fort, you see right outside the entrance a dedication from (I believe) 1929, by the Daughters of the Confederacy, which says: “In Revereantial Memory of the Confederate Garrison of Fort Sumter Who During Four Years of Continuous Siege and Constant Assault from April 1861 to February 1865 Defended This Harbor Without Knowing Defeat or Sustaining Surrender.” Inside the fort are two commemorations left by the NPS in the 1950s, one to Anderson, and the other to Anderson and his men.

So according to the locals (including the tour guide on the boat), Fort Sumter is dedicated to the Confederate forces who held it for four years. According to the NPS, Fort Sumter is dedicated to the Union forces who surrendered the fort to the Confederate forces (actually, the South Carolina state militia, since there technically weren’t any Confederate forces yet). You think I’m headed toward a “there are no facts, only interpretations” conclusion, don’t you? You don’t know me very well.

There is also a museum at the fort, and also maintained by the NPS, but it is very unlike the museum on the shore. The museum at the fort takes no sides on any issue. It not only gives you historical information, but about both the North and the South. It tells you why Anderson’s occupation of Fort Sumter so angered the South Carolinians, instead of just telling you that the State Militia fired on Anderson and his forces inside Fort Sumter. The museum presents facts, in a very even-handed way.

You can’t really understand the Civil War if you only get the King Cotton blah blah blah Slavery blah blah blah nonsense, because it was far, far more than just cotton or slavery (I’m not saying that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War, but that slavery wasn’t the primaryissue for either the North or South). You certainly can’t really understand the Civil War if you think of it as “freeing the slaves,” or some chapter in a civil rights struggle. You can’t really understand the Civil War–no matter to which side you feel more sympathy–unless you understand both the North and the South. And every American should thoroughly understand the Civil War, because it had such a huge effect on our nation, and still does today. The shots fired on April 12, 1861 would change our nation forever. Those opposing commemorations are a testament to that.

But Fort Sumter is the proof that you can present history objectively, and separate the interpretation from the fact. While the opposing commemorations are interpretations, they reveal what Fort Sumter means to two groups of people: The two groups who once fought and died for what they believed in the bloodiest war of our nation’s history. History can be presented as the Fort Sumter museum presents it, giving voice to both sides of the conflict, and explaining the issues, as both sides saw them, that led up to that conflict. Presenting nothing but spin, either pro-Union or pro-Confederate, is reducing history to political propaganda.

Mountains, 75 and breezy, runaway truck ramps, hairpin curves, Black Bear Lane–hey, we must be back home!

Well, they’re up (the last is the Yorktown, which is now the WW2 museum. Didn’t get there–wasn’t enough time.) Oh. The URL. Pics are here.

The website says the trips are at 9:30, 12:00, and 2:30. The matinee is at 2:30, so it sounds like taking the 12:00 trip would be cutting it too close. So we’re going to see Fort Sumter at 9:30. And yes, I’ll be taking the camera.

From the website: “Use insect repellent in the warmer months. Beware of fire ant mounds.”

Uh-huh.

Also from the website: “Summer here is hot and humid, so drink plenty of water and take frequent breaks out of the sun.”

No! Really?

I’m in serious pain, and don’t think I can ever eat again, but I just thought I’d say that this is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever put in my mouth–and you can order them online.

And this is the draw, though the whole menu sounds great (note the line: Coconut lovers beware as it is truly addicting.)

Sweet tea. I want sweet tea. On our way out, we’ll ask at the front desk.

Read the following epitaph, and see if you can spot what would have the PC crowd screaming (you may have to click on the pic for the full size to read it). It’s hard to imagine the nuts in Philly allowing this to exist:

I’m not sure why, but today, I saw a lot of Steelers logos on the streets. Did our trip coincide with some other trip of Pennsylvanians down here, or are these just non-local fans?