The Great American Road Trip: Day 86

JK and I had a slower start to our morning after our very late night adventures, perfect on a drizzling Wednesday morning. I put some laundry in and we went out to breakfast, then we headed downtown. The traffic was absolutely horrific! We couldn't figure out what was going on - it was the day before Thanksgiving so we expected traffic on the highways, but why all the congestion on smaller roads heading into town?

Our plan was to tour the Masonic Temple downtown. We braved some very confusing traffic patterns and even found a great parking spot, so we were feeling pretty good about how the afternoon was turning out. I knew that the temple had tours every hour, so to kill some time before the 3pm tour we walked around the area, and when JK realized we were near the famous Philly "LOVE" sign, we of course had to go take photos. We walked through this plaza of giant game pieces on our way - Monopoly and Sorry pieces, dominoes, etc. - it was a really cool and unexpected sight. JK explained that there's some deal about building large new developments in the city, that a percentage of the budget has to be for public works of art. I love the idea, it was one thing that had stuck with me when we visited Philly for a family reunion 10 years ago - all of the cool sculptures everywhere.

Once we got to the Temple around 2:45 we realized that it was closed to visitors! At least we couldn't find any sort of entrance that seemed open, and we both felt a little uncomfortable just popping in the unmarked side door to check. We still had time on our parking meter, so we walked down the block to the Reading Terminal Market. It was quite reminiscent of the North Market in Columbus, but much more crowded and a bit larger - we would turn a corner and head towards a part that I thought we had already walked through, only to discover that I didn't recognize the items for sale and had to conclude that it was a much bigger maze than I had thought. We wandered and poked around in a bunch of fun shops, and JK gently "insisted" that I should try the mysterious "butter cake" at the Flying Monkey Bakery by buying a piece. When I went to look up recipes online I found out that this was closer to a "gooey butter cake" than just a cake made with butter, it was a bit like a lemon bar, except in a rich, salty-sweet way. Decadently delicious!

We headed home and JK kindly let me putter about with applications and travel plans and such, then we made plans to meet up with Emma and enjoy (more!) West African food. We agreed to take a chance on a new place in another part of town, this time driving over to Kilimanjaro. The location in a strip mall wasn't the most welcoming at night, but inside the restaurant it felt a bit fancier than at Le Bercail. They had a good selection of various foods, heavily Senegalese. The food plating was very fancy - closer to what you'd expect in a tablecloth-and-candles kind of restaurant rather than a paper-placement establishment, and some of the recipes seemed to have been modified to fit a more American palate. Alloco (fried plantains) tends to be kind of a salty-sweet dish, but here they used less ripe plantains so it wasn't very sweet at all, and then they topped it with this absolutely delicious onion relish of sorts - we couldn't figure out what was in it (probably a lot of MSG...), but we all agreed that it was an unexpected change that we liked. Also, my schwarma had french fries stuffed in it, which made me smile when I realized that I had forgotten that particular quirk of Burkinabe fast food.

We got to talking to our server and it turned out that she was Burkinabe, from Ouaga! She started happily chatting in French (which we all understood) and Moore (which JK understood and was significantly more successful in replying in than Emma or myself) - it turns out that she left Ouaga to get a degree in accounting in Mali, and came to the US 3 years ago to get another accounting degree here. It was frustrating and embarrassing to find that I could hardly understand Moore at this point, that words I knew I had learned were just beyond reach in my mind, but it was also so exciting and nostalgic to hear the language spoken again and to pick out words here and there that I did still know. It was also amusing to all of us that her English after 3 years was so dramatically better than our French was after 2 and 3 years, respectively.

I didn't get a picture, but the boathouses on Boathouse Row were all outlined in strings of colored lights that night, reflecting in the river - it was really beautiful.