In September, the Mister and I spent a long weekend in Philadelphia. I usually like to do some planning before I leave for a destination. But with a work deadline right before our trip, I only read a bit about the city while in route.
And you know what, it went just fine! We took it day by day and had a lovely time. Here’s how we spent 72 hours in Philadelphia. Plus, I include some tweaks to our itinerary with the wisdom of hindsight.
How to Get Around Philadelphia
Renting a car is not necessary. We took public transit — the system is called SEPTA — and one Lyft. You don’t even need to purchase a ticket. Simply tap your phone or card. While there are three-day passes and one-day passes that can be loaded on a SEPTA card, those are only worth it if you’re taking a lot of transit. We paid as we went, which ended up being the most cost effective for us.
Where We Stayed
Club Quarters Rittenhouse Square, which adheres to the tradition of hotels not really being in the neighborhoods they purport to be in. The hotel is in City Center (but the fancier Rittenhouse Square neighborhood is adjacent). While the rooms are pretty standard and not particularly notable, I do want to praise the chilled water stations on each floor. I appreciated being able to refill my water bottle on the floor. And if you forgot yours, they also provide empty bottles.
Attractions & Museums
- Benjamin Franklin Museum
- Magic Gardens
- Mural Arts Philadelphia
- Mütter Museum
- Schuylkill River Trail
- Terminal Reading Market
Shopping
- Fishtown
- South Street
- 2nd Street
- Greene Street
- The Raxx Vintage Emporium
- Retrospect Vintage
- Philly AIDS Thrift
- Rittenhouse Square & City Center
- 2nd Street
- Long in the Tooth
Our 72-Hour Itinerary in Philadelphia
Day 1 (arrival day): Thursday
Formerly a working class neighborhood, Fishtown is now home to some of the highest income earners in Philadelphia.
We took the train from Penn Station in NYC. It’s a pleasant 1.5 hour train ride, which left me wondering why we haven’t done this before! We arrived at Philly’s 30th Street Station in the afternoon and simply walked to our hotel in City Center (about a 25 minute walk), with a stop at Trader Joe’s for snacks.
After a rest, we headed to Fishtown, named for the occupations of its prior residents. Today it’s a trendy neighborhood with shops and eateries. We visited a few stores and bought some vintage postcards at Jinx Fishtown, a reasonably priced vintage shop with mostly home goods (though there are a few racks of clothes).
Jinxed Fishtown. There’s also locations in Manayunk and South Philly.
The main attraction for us in Fishtown was the highly rated Lebanese restaurant Suraya. We snagged a reservation day-of for 5 p.m. and ate a leisurely dinner in the spacious garden patio before returning to the hotel to chill.
Day 2: Friday
Reading Terminal Market is home to more than 80 vendors.
This was a packed day! After a bit of morning exercise, we headed to Terminal Reading Market, an indoor food hall with an impressive number of vendors. Choosing what to eat was hard because there were so many tempting options. (I will do another post just on the food we ate in Philly.)
Photos are not allowed in the exhibits at the Mütter Museum, so here is a photo of the outside.
Next, we checked out the Mütter Museum, a 19th century style cabinet museum of medical history and oddities. It’s not for the squeamish, as there are real human skulls and anatomical specimens preserved in jars. It was fascinating to see what the body can do. Philadelphia is known for many American medical firsts, such as the first hospital (1751) and medical school (1765), and the museum is located at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
The mosaicked world of the Magic Gardens.
From there, we took a Lyft to the Magic Gardens, an outdoor labyrinthine art installation by artist Isaiah Zagar, who spent decades beautifying the streets and buildings of Philly. Magic Gardens started off as an abandoned lot next to his art studio, which he cleaned up and mosaicked with found objects, ceramics, concrete, and more. It’s an impressive feat and we marveled at its details.
Afterwards, we walked around the neighborhood, South Street, where there’s a concentration of secondhand and vintage shops, including:
Raxx Vintage Emporium. If you’re looking for something specific, they’ll most likely have a rack dedicated to it.
Retrospect Vintage is actually a Goodwill. It’s owned and operated by Goodwill Industries of Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia.
Philly AIDS Thrift has multiple floors with lots of rooms.
Then we walked to dinner at Blue Corn, considered one of the best Mexican restaurant in Philadelphia. It did not disappoint. That evening we saw PJ Harvey at The Met Philadelphia, which was the impetus for our trip.
Day 3: Saturday
Untitled by Amy Sherald is a a six stories high portrait of a young woman the artist met.
We returned to Terminal Reading Market because it’s walking distance from our hotel and there were still foods we wanted to try. Then we took a tour with Mural Arts Philadelphia, which offers walking tours on the weekends. You can also book private tours. Philly is known as “the mural capital of the world” for its more than 4,300 murals, many of them created as part of a city-run anti-graffiti program. On the 90-minute tour through different centrally-located neighborhoods, we learned about how innovative materials allow murals to be made in pieces and then assembled, allowing many people to participate off-site in creating them.
Afterwards, we walked into Chinatown for banh mi at QT Vietnamese Sandwich. Then, we walked back to the hotel, stopping by another outpost of 2nd Street along the way, which is right next door to Uniqlo. After a rest, we took the bus to the Benjamin Franklin Museum, which cost all of $5 for an adult ticket. We also watched a demonstration of the printing press in the nearby Printing Office, which was very cool and free.
The Benjamin Franklin Museum is a manageable size and can been seen in an hour.
The Printing Office is a recreation of an 18th-century printing press operation similar to what Benjamin Franklin would have used.
Then we got back on the bus to Rittenhouse Square, mostly to check out the record shop Long In the Tooth. We also sat in Rittenhouse Square itself to people watch before enjoying dinner at the nearby Almaz Cafe, an Ethiopian restaurant.
Day 4 (departure day): Sunday
The Schuylkill River Trail has over 75 miles of paved and crushed stone trails.
In the morning we grabbed breakfast sandwiches from K’Far Cafe and walked along the Schuylkill River Trail. It took us past the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and if we weren’t leaving on this day, we would have went in. Instead, we took the bus back to our hotel so we could check out by noon. After meeting friends for lunch, we took Amtrak back to NYC, feeling satisfied with our long weekend away.
Tweaks I’d Make to the Itinerary
I think we packed in a decent amount in 72 hours, but with hindsight, I’d arrange some things differently. Mostly, I’d plan to arrive at certain places earlier so that we’d have more time to explore.
For example, on the first night, ideally we would have eaten later. That would have given us more time to explore the shops of Fishtown. By the time we were done eating at Suraya, most stores had closed. (Let that be a lesson not to make dinner reservations the day of!)
Likewise, Blue Corn is located in South 9th Street Italian Market, a historic shopping district with food vendors and groceries. I didn’t even realize this until we arrived. We didn’t have time to check it out since we had to make a show. Next time I’d build in some time to walk around this area.
But adding time there means taking time from something else. I’d move the Mütter Museum to the same day of the mural walk and Rittenhouse Square, since those are close to each other. (We had decided to go to the Mütter Museum on a Friday, reasoning that it’d be less crowded than on a Saturday. On Friday, we just walked up. But on a weekend, you’d probably want to buy timed tickets in advance.)
We also got to the Benjamin Franklin Museum in the late afternoon, and thus only really had time to see it. But the neighborhood it’s located in, Old City, offers many museums and historic attractions, such as Independence Hall, Elfreth’s Alley, and the African American Museum in Philadelphia. We should have forgone shopping that day and budgeted more time to take in a few more things. And, if you’re visiting during the summer, the National Parks Service runs free tours in the evenings.
In any case, we just barely scratched the surface of what there is to see and do in Philadelphia. I guess we’ll just have to come back!
First Image: Jimmy Woo/Unsplash
