Things To Do: Philadelphia Nature!

The NY Times recently had an article on Philadelphia Area Gardens.

The article focuses on Jenkins Arboretum and Gardens in Devon, Pa.; Chanticleer Garden in Wayne; Scott Arboretum at Swarthmore College; Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia; and Highlands Mansion and Gardens. And links to this very helpful page about Greater Philadelphia Gardens

For the nature lovers, I'll add a couple more. And once again, most of the descriptions are from Lonely Planet, because I am incapable of briefly explaining anything.




John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum

86th Street and Lindberg Boulevard Philadelphia, PA 19113
Tel: +1 215 365 3118
http://www.fws.gov/northeast/heinz/

It's a freshwater tidal marsh right next to the airport. It's visited by 300 different species of birds and has 10 miles of trails. They also have fishing and canoeing.




Fairmount Park
http://www.fairmountpark.org/

The snaking Schuylkill River bisects this 9,200-acre greenspace − bigger than New York's Central Park and, in fact, the largest city park in the country. From the earliest days of spring every corner is thrumming with activity − ball games, runners, picnickers, you name it. The enthusiasm is catchy and you'll certainly want to join them. Runners will love the tree-lined, riverside trails, which range from 2 miles to 10 miles in length.




Morris Arboretum

100 E. Northwestern Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19118
215-247-5777
http://www.business-services.upenn.edu/arboretum/index.shtml

The Morris Arboretum is a wonderful place to visit for those who love trees, plants, beautiful landscapes and interesting sculpture. The grounds are laid out as a series of separate areas, with nice views across the grounds. Examples of areas within the grounds include the rose garden (a beautiful, sophisticated planting that is a riot of color in June) and a railroad garden (a miniature train line that runs through a planting that mimic a landscape). Throughout the garden one finds a wide array of pleasing sculptures (see attached photo of the Greenman sculputure that was carved out of a tree trunk). There is also a visitor's center and cafe on site.

One can easily spend the entire day at the arboretum, but enjoy parts of it in just an hour or two if that is all the time one had or wanted to spend. The arboretum is located on the very northern edge of Philadelphia, which is about 20 miles north of downtown Philadelphia. It is easiest to get there by car. A taxi ride from downtown runs about $50 with tip. One can get there via regional rail (either Chestnut Hill station, end of the line), then public bus to a nearby college, then about a 10 minute walk from there. A compromise is to take a taxi there and the bus/train back.




Bartram's Garden

54th St. and Lindbergh Blvd.
Philadelphia, PA 19143

215.729.5281
info@bartramsgarden.org

They talk about Bartram's Garden in the NY Times article, but here's the description from Lonely Planet:

Bartram's Garden was the first botanical garden and commercial nursery in the United States. The property consists of Bartram's historic home, a central garden area and a series of woodland paths, some of which border the nearby river. There are numerous unusual and old trees on the property. When in the garden property one would have no idea one was in the middle of the city. It is a quiet and scenic property. There is a small gift shop on site. On weekends the garden sometimes has special events, for example talks on the history of greenhouses in America or demonstrations of a potter making flower pots in historical style.

The garden is located near the edge of Philadelphia in a part of the city that is industrialized and also contains residential/businesses and public housing. One can get to the garden via the "trolley", a train car that starts out underground but then emerges away from downtown and acts as a streetcar from there. The garden's website contains directions (http://www.bartramsgarden.org/). It is about one block to the garden from the nearest trolley stop.

Red Dress!

I just had my wedding dress fitting this weekend, so I think it's time for a dress oriented post!

Since at least high school I've been saying that if I ever get married that I'd wear a red dress. The Chinese traditionally wear red dresses because they consider red a lucky color and white is what they wear at funerals.



Red is also a traditional wedding color in India. And I won't lie, I considered getting married in a Sari...



And when we started planning the wedding, I never even considered a white dress. It had to be red. For one, living somewhere that is often over 100 degrees in the summer, I wear white dresses all the time. What I wear are certainly not wedding dresses, but since I already wear white all the time, it didn't seem particularly special.



The tradition of white dress started with Queen Victoria in 1840, who wore white for her wedding to incorporate some lace she already owned. Since then it had become the norm. But before then, ladies would wear whatever color they wanted. Often, they would just wear the nicest dress they owned.



But red dresses have gotten very big these days. A lot of major bridal lines will include one or two red dresses. One big plus of the red dress is that any white dress automatically costs at least twice as much as the same dress in any other color. (Similarly, if you putting 'wedding' in front of anything it automatically doubles the price).



So I started looking just at high end evening gowns. But the downside was that while there are one million white dresses to choose from, there are less red dresses to chose from. So you are less likely to find one that you really like.

But despite what I had always envisioned for my wedding, what really held me back was actually the color red! I think red looks really amazing on a big gown. Just look at some of these pictures to see how striking it is. But trekking out to the middle of nowhere in Iceland, a big gown is kind of out of the question. And as I looked at the red not-ballgowns, I started to notice that on more sheath style gowns it looked...um...well...kind of too sexy.



So, if I couldn't wear a big ballgown dress, where the red looks amazing -- and was planning on wearing a slimmer dress, where really the red comes off too sexy -- well, then it just wasn't going to be red.

I will reveal to you one big secret. Stop reading if you don't want to know! After all this...my dress...is pink. At least it's red meets white! Pink just looks better on me, with my brown hair and eyes. It's definitely more my style. So after 10 years of swearing by the red dress...



(Don't worry, I am not wearing a Hello Kitty dress!)

Therefore, you may eschew the convention of not wearing white to a wedding if you want to -- although it will be after Labor Day. You just can't win!

Things To Do: Sports!

Philadelphia has a couple great sports teams, so we thought we'd give you the information in case you wanted to take in a game!

The Philadelphia Phillies will be away on our wedding weekend, but they come back on Monday if you're making a trip out of it. Here's their schedule.






The Philadelphia Eagles will be in town, playing the Chiefs at 1:00 on Sunday, September 27th. Tickets go on sale in July. Here's their schedule.

Enjoy!

Things To Do: Philadelphia Hearts Arts!

Philadelphia has a surprising amount of pretty great Art Museums. If you like the pretty pictures, there's some good options. The info below is from the Lonely Planet Guide:

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Address: 26th St & Benjamin Franklin Pkwy, Museum District
Phone: 763 8100
Website: www.philamuseum.org
Transport: bus: 32, 38, 43, 76
Hours: Tue, Thu, Sat & Sun 10:00 - 17:00 ; Wed, Fri 10:00 - 20:45

Modeled after the Champs Elysées in Paris, the parkway is a center of museums and other landmarks, of which the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a highlight. It's one of the nation's largest and most important museums, with excellent collections of Asian art, Renaissance masterpieces, post-impressionist works and modern pieces by Picasso, Duchamp and Matisse.

The grand stairway at its entrance was immortalized when Sylvester Stallone ran up the steps in the 1976 flick Rocky .




Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Address: 118 N Broad St, Museum District
Phone: 972 7600
Website: www.pafa.org
Transport: SEPTA Race-Vine

Pennsylvania has many fine museums. One of the most interesting is the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, a prestigious Philadelphia academy that has a museum with works by American painters, including Charles Willson Peale and Thomas Eakins. The museum lives in an oddball Victorian building designed by Frank Furness.




Institute of Contemporary Art

Address: 118 S 36th St, University City
Phone: 215 898 5911
Website: www.icaphila.org

On the campus of U Penn, the heralded Institute of Contemporary Art is an excellent place to catch fresh shows by folks making a big splash at the cutting-edge of the art world.




Barnes Foundation Gallery

Address: 300 N Lodges Lane, Fairmount Pk
Phone: 667 0290
Website: www.barnesfoundation.org
Transport: SEPTA R5 Merion Station

The Barnes Foundation Gallery houses an exceptionally fine collection of impressionist, post-impressionist and early French modern paintings, including works by Cézanne, Degas, Matisse, Monet, Picasso, Renoir and Van Gogh.

Engagement Redux

We had a very busy weekend! Yesterday was the one year anniversary of our engagement, so we went on our engagement road trip!

We took some pictures at our engagement spot near Grassy Hollow Recreation Area in Angeles National Forest.

Here's another look at that crazy bald head:



This is the engagement bench:













These are my wedding boots:



We're going hiking on wedding day so I got some fancy hiking boots, but now I have to break them in. And good thing we took them out for the test run because I got some uncomfortable blisters! Better now than wedding day. I'm going to wear them a couple more times to break them so they'll be all ready for the wedding hike.

When we got engaged originally, even though it was Memorial Day Weekend, it was in the snow. But this year it was all dry. Several pictures from the original engagement day are on the right hand side of the blog. Nonetheless, snow-less engagement day road trip redux was still a success!

Happy Birthday Matt!

Today is Matt's birthday. We went to Point Dume Beach in Malibu and had a lovely beach day! We had to walk a bit to get to a somewhat more private cove area which is where they filmed this:

Then we went to dinner and everything and had cupcakes from Sprinkles because we are super obsessed with Sprinkles cupcakes. And now we're going to watch (easy to guess if you browsed the previous entry) -- a Bollywood movie!

Here's a couple pictures from our day. You may notice that Matt recently shaved all his hair off! Do not worry, the stuff grows like crazy, it'll be back before the wedding.


Note the sunscreen in the picture, which Matt used a lot of, on his new bald head.








For comparison, here's Matt's bushy head from a couple weeks ago when we had a really great trip to San Diego. We stayed with our friends Sean & Lindsay (who are also getting married in September!) and also met up with our friends Geoff & Cat from Massachusetts who were visiting. But this is like the only picture we managed to take of ourselves:

About Us: Bollywood!

Note:If you subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog, you probably won't see the imbedded videos in this entry.

Matt & I are big Bollywood fans. Bollywood is the name for the Hindi-speaking Film Industry in India. And all major Bollywood films are musicals! Not kidding, they're all musicals. It's awesome.

We watch the Bollywood music video shows every weekend on a local channel. And a couple times a year we travel to Artesia, where the Indian Movie Theater is, to see the new releases. (They even offer samosas at the theater!)

There are more releases in Bollywood per year than in Hollywood, so we don't keep up with absolutely everything. But we do keep up with their big star vehicles.

Now, I will inundate you with videos.



Shah Rukh Khan has been the biggest movie star in Bollywood for at least 15 years. I think he's the best movie star in the world. He's not traditionally good looking (with a big nose and his signature flopsy hair), but when SRK (as his name is often abbreviated) laughs, you laugh with him and when SRK cries, you cry with him. Like millions of Indians, I am a big fan.

This first video, which I warn you is a little long, is one of the most famous musical sequences in Bollywood history. It is from the film Dil Se (1998), which is actually about a man who falls in love with a female suicide bomber. Coincidentally, it was one of the first Bollywood movies that both Matt and I saw, before we even knew each other. The music is by A.R. Rahman who recently won two Oscars for Slumdog Millionaire.





Om Shanti Om is a really super great movie that came out two years ago. It is full of Bollywood film history, so it's not a good film to start with because you won't get all the references. But this song, "Dhoom Taana" is actually a good intro to Bollywood film history -- showing films and film styles from the various decades. The lead character, played by Shah Rukh Khan again, is watching a film in the theater, and then becomes part of the songs in his mind.





I'm really tempted to post Dard-E-Disco, from the same movie, also starring SRK, which is a joke song mocking the new style of Bollywood musical sequences (instead here is a link if you happen to be particularly interested). These new sequences are more Western in dance style and overtly sexy. Dard-E-Disco, which translates as "Pain of Disco" is very funny when you know what they are making fun of. SRK even shows off his six pack even though he never usually does shirtless scenes like a lot of the other Bollywood actors.

Alternatively, I shall show you some thing in the style of what they're actually mocking. Dhoom 2 (sequel of course to 'Dhoom' which we've actually never seen - Dhoom means 'have a blast' in Hindi), is one of my favorite movies (we saw it twice at the Indian movie theater). It's not a good movie, it's a big over the top blockbuster, but I enjoy watching it's slickly made ridiculousness.

It stars Aishwarya Rai, who is a former Miss World. She is one of the most internationally known Bollywood stars -- you may have seen her in Revlon commercials or movies like The Pink Panther. Note the amusing number of costume changes...





It's worth mentioning that Aishwarya is not usually as thin as she is in this video. She had gained weight for a previous role (the Hollywood cross over film Bride & Prejudice) and while losing the weight for this role ended up losing too much. This is the thinnest I've ever seen her. Indian movie stars, who I think are blessed with amazing DNA in some cases, are not generally as thin as American movie stars. (For instance, here's Bipasha Basu, who I think is the hottest woman ever. And she's a size 12, which for a movie star is a lot. That video is from Omkara which is a retelling of MacBeth).

But back to Ash (as Aishwarya Rai is commonly referred to), I could show you any number of musical sequences in which she is dancing in traditional Indian style, while wearing a Sari. Surprisingly, I can only show you three movies ever where Ash stars with SRK since he vowed to never work with her again after an incident where her boyfriend at the time showed up on set yelling and screaming and interrupted filming. Amusingly though, SRK is still friends with the screaming boyfriend -- he just won't work with her again.



The super hot guy who appears briefly in that video with Ash is Hrithik Roshan. Sigh... Matt has given me permission to leave him for Hrithik if the opportunity ever arises. But Hrithik married his childhood sweetheart, so I think we're safe. Hrithik is known as the best dancer in Bollywood (Here's the last movie he did. Not actually his first circus themed dance scene though, strangely enough).

There will certainly be some Bollywood songs at the reception. When the song "Pehli Nazar Mein" from the movie Race came out I said to Matt -- good thing we're not getting married right now, or I'd have to change this to our first dance song. So when you hear this slow song in Hindi -- you'll know it was almost the one.

One constantly amazing thing about Bollywood videos is that they regularly manage to get very very busy places looking very very empty. The most amazing is Time Square with no one in it (for the song "Hey Shona" from Tara Rum Pum , but I've also always been impressed by Saint Mark's Square with no one in it (from Bachna Ae Haseeno).

A funny thing about Bollywood (the big films anyway) is that they never kiss onscreen (and of course a sex scene would be absolutely out of the question. They do what we always refer to as "suggestive nuzzling". In Dhoom 2 mentioned above, two of the lead actors do kiss and they were sued for indecency (for kissing in a movie!). It was a big deal at the time.

Someone asked us recently to recommend some Bollywood films, and it was honestly quite hard. I guess it depends what you are looking for. They have comedies and dramas and silly blockbusters like anywhere else. They actually remake a lot of Hollywood films (sometimes even better than the original! I'd say 'Partner' is better than the film it's remaking 'Hitch').

And I could show you videos all day -- how amusing Abhishek Bachchan is, the hotness of another Miss World winner Priyanka Chopra, or Bollywood's best female dancer Madhuri Dixit.

But I will leave you with this song from "Jab We Met" -- a movie which is essentially a remake of "It Happened One Night". This is a wedding song and it's not in Hindi, it's in Punjabi. In Bollywood films, there are often these fun Punjabi songs in wedding scenes.

This song stars Shahid Kapoor, who is also known as a great dancer. I always refer to him as "Boyfriend" because he actually looks a good deal like Matt! Matt often has similarly flopsy hair and you should see Shahid with glasses on. Shahid is definitely Matt's long lost Indian cousin.





Hope you enjoyed your Indian adventure!

Things To Do: Pennsylvania Wineries

Evidently the state of Pennsylvania has like 100 wineries -- who knew? Several of them have won all kinds of National and International awards -- who knew? There is a comprehensive website: http://www.pennsylvaniawine.com/ -- that has information on each of the wineries and a map of their locations. There's a gaggle within an easy drive of Philadelphia.

My parents are going to visit some of the wineries on their way up north in June, to choose the best wine for the wedding! Matt and I went to a tasting at Crossing Vineyards over Christmas, I think they may actually be the most expensive winery in Pennsylvania, but it was really good. Let me qualify that -- to Matt and I, who can probably count on two hands the amount of wine we've drank in our lives -- it was really good.

We considered having our reception at a winery, but we wanted to stay pretty close to the airport for the ease of our guests and we're not super into wine. We are rather into books though, hence the Library won out!

But if you like wine, and have the time, this could be a fun thing to do. And scenic, since most of the wineries are in very pretty areas.