Whew, ya’ll. I went to one of the hottest cities on the planet, America’s birthplace, Philadelphia. I was so excited to go, because one, I had never been, and two, my best girlfriends live there and they are also Sagittarius, so I just KNEW the exploration was going to be off the charts. This is my full list of things to do in Philadelphia, rest and all.
I’ll be honest. By the time I got to Philly, I was half past burnt out, stressed out, and SO TIRED. R&R for me truly is rooted in feeding my brain new places, trying new foods, and soaking up everything new.
So the first thing I did after I got picked up from the airport? Dropped my bags in the living room and collapsed into my bestie’s bean bag chair for an epic nap. She has a purple guitar leaning in the corner, plants crowding every shelf, a little disco ball catching the light off the balcony. It felt like the kind of room where nothing bad can find you. I am usually the one holding the itinerary, the one who books the thing and maps the route. For a few hours in that chair, I was nobody’s planner. I was just tired and safe and horizontal.
When I woke up from that nap? Oh baby, it was ON.
We started easy. LOVE Park, because obviously. Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture sits up on its pedestal with the fountain running behind it and the whole Parkway opening up past that, and for once I wasn’t rushing anyone to the next thing. My bestie and I just stood in it for a minute, snapped a few selfies, and took the moment in. Around us were kids running and laughing, water splashing from the splash pad across the street. Despite the 900 thousand degree heat, I got to just soak up the moment and the joy of what was coming.
As we walked through the city I kept spotting these murals made from mirror shards and broken glass, almost like mosaics. My friend told me there was a place where I could see all of it in one spot, so we headed over to Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens on South Street.
It is a whole world built out of broken things. Isaiah Zagar spent decades pressing tile shards, mirror pieces, bottles, bike wheels, and dinner plates into every surface he could reach, most of it material other people had thrown out, until half a block of the city became a mosaic you can walk through. There is something about a man who looked at what everyone else wrote off as trash and saw the start of something people now travel to see. Zagar died this past February, months after my trip. I did not know it standing there in 2025, but I got to walk through his life’s work while he was still alive to keep adding to it. That sits differently now.
If you want to see the mosaics up close, watch the Magic Gardens short.
Things to Do in Philadelphia, the Tourist Way
City Hall is absurd in the best way. It is the largest municipal building in the country, this giant ornate pile of marble and granite with William Penn standing watch at the very top, and it shrinks you down in the good way. I was so annoyed, because no matter how I angled it, I was never getting me and the top of the building in the same shot. LOL.
The Liberty Bell was something. My friend and I got lucky and walked over to Independence Hall, where we slid into a tour group that was just getting started, so we got to stand in the actual room where the founding fathers sat around cooped up and musty, complaining about things that eventually got white people free. That wasn’t the history of my people, but it was still cool to see a place with that much history.
Then the Rocky steps. They were a little underwhelming, though I did appreciate that they had an accessible version of the Rocky statue at the bottom, so you can pose without climbing anything. As for me, I ran up the steps, giggling like the immature woman I am, in the 800 thousand degree weather.
The Food
Man, I’m not a foodie. I enjoy a good meal, but I could truly eat the same thing over and over with no problem. I wasn’t coming to Philly to skip the food scene though, and I kinda had no choice anyways, cuz my girls are foodies, so I was gonna EAT.
John’s Water Ice, or “wooder ice” if you’re saying it like a real Philadelphian, is family owned since 1945 and the move on a hot day. My bestie and I stood outside the little red and white shop with cups of cherry ice, tongues already stained, cracking up before we even got a good bite in. It was so cold it made my teeth ache and I did not give a damn. I went back and had it two more times before I flew home.
Same went for Reading Terminal Market. Miller’s Twist hated to see me coming, like four times TBH lol, but those Amish-style pretzels were to die for. My mouth is watering just typing about it! Neon cheesesteak signs, butcher counters, bakery cases, every kind of person in the city squeezing past every other kind, all of it under one roof. You go in hungry and come out full and a little overstimulated and completely happy.
The Weird and the Wonderful
Philly has a sense of humor, and I’m here for it. There was a giant mural of JD Vance in Fishtown, painted from that bald baby meme that took over the internet, splashed across the side of a restaurant called Sulimay’s by a group called FUBAR PAC. People drive across the city to stand under it and lose it laughing. I was one of them. A whole town deciding to be this petty and this committed about a meme is the funniest thing I saw all trip.
I got the mural on video, staring eyes and all. Watch the JD Vance mural short.
Harriett’s Bookshop pulled me all the way back in. It is the first Black woman owned bookstore in Fishtown, opened in 2020 by Jeannine A. Cook and named for Harriet Tubman, built to celebrate women authors, artists, and activists. The inside is this deep electric blue, with a sign that reads “Reflections Provided By Black Women Are Gold.” I stood in front of the mirror there a second longer than I needed to. Some rooms are built to remind you that you belong in them. That one did.
Take a look inside Harriett’s Bookshop.
The Rodin Museum on the Parkway was my reprieve stop. It was a million degrees out, they had AC, and it was donation based. All in for me. Out front sits The Thinker, and past him is the reason I wanted to come: the Gates of Hell, Rodin’s massive bronze doors pulled straight out of Dante’s Inferno, packed with more than 180 bodies twisting and reaching. Philadelphia’s cast was the first one ever made in bronze. I stood in front of all that struggle frozen in metal on a hot, humid day, thinking about how a monument to hell can feel weirdly synonymous with the weather.
No Lo In The City adventure is complete without a night out with a local man who shows me the city through his eyes. We went to a comedy show and laughed until my face hurt, then took a long night drive around the city with the windows down. At one point I sat by the water while the Benjamin Franklin Bridge glittered over the Delaware, and I let myself be somewhere beautiful with someone who wanted to be there too.
I came to Philadelphia to rest, and I did. Some of it in a bean bag chair, some of it on a bench by the river, some of it in a blue bookstore that felt like a mirror. The rest of the time I was full of water ice, laughing at murals, and getting looked at like I was worth the drive. I keep waiting to feel too grown or too busy for a trip like this one. I hope that day never comes.
If you want to see Philly move instead of sit still, watch it here.
Tell me the truth: what is the city nobody told you to love that you loved anyway? I want to hear about the trip you almost didn’t take.
No Comments