Philly Part II - The Bad

I didn't see enough of Philadelphia to offer an educated opinion about where it ranks among America's great cities, but I saw enough to say Pittsburgh is a much more picturesque place. There were a lot of eyesores in Philly, leading me to understand why some people call it "Filthy-delphia." Also, traffic was worse than what I generally have run into in Pittsburgh. On our way to dinner Friday night, we were stuck in bumper-to-bumper, barely moving traffic for a good 45 minutes, and when our speed finally picked up, I couldn't for the life of me see what the traffic jam was all about. And this wasn't at 5 p.m. It was more like 7:30. We ran into the same kind of inexplicable mess coming out of Philly the next day. But my favorite "poor rube in the big city" story came when we were sightseeing on South Street in Philly. We parked in a nearby parking garage and spent about two hours on South Street. When we returned to the car and went to the booth to pay, I couldn't hear clearly what the girl said. "Did you say $7.18," I asked, thinking that was an odd figure. "No," she said. "17. 17 dollars." For two hours of parking. At that kind of rate, I sort of expected the girl working there to facilitate some sort of "happy ending" for me, but, alas, that was not the case. It would be a long walk from King of Prussia to downtown Philly, but I had the fleeting thought that it might be faster and, with gas prices and the exhorbitant parking fees, a lot cheaper.