Road Trip

Although I love living in a small town, on occasion I love leaving it.  Last Tuesday, Diane and I hit the road for a trip to Philadelphia.  We make this trip once or twice each year.

Diane grew up in suburban Philadelphia and has places she still likes to visit.  We always end up at the mall in King of Prussia.  If the traffic gods smile, it takes a bit over three hours to get to Bryn Mawr where Diane had some errands.  We considered stopping off at The Bakery, a place that has been in business for many, many years.  But it was on the wrong side of the street and she decided to just keep going.  While she did what she had to do, I crossed the street to a well known bagelry to stock up on bagels.  We have a few bagel shops in State College, but these are better.  I slice them, put them in zip lock bags and freeze them.

Then we were off to KOP.  And what do you know??  There was a parking space right in front of The Bakery!  We had to go in.  There were two platters of samples just staring me in the face, so of course I tried a (small piece) of chocolate cupcake.  I managed to restrain myself, but it was difficult.  Diane’s favorite coffee cake was waiting for her, so she got it.  On the way out, the platter of blueberry cake called my name.  Lucky me.

The King of Prussia mall is very large.  Bloomingdales is at one end, Nordstrom’s is at the other, and Neiman Marcus is in the middle.  We parked in front of Bloomingdales.  They had a sale in progress, plus we both had mystery cards that came in the mail, and emails with a secret extra discount.  What more incentive did we need?  We split up, I found some clothes in the fat ladies department but there was no one to help me.  I wandered over to the Eileen Fisher department where I found Diane and Dana, a very nice sales lady.  OMG, the dieting is starting to pay off.  I tried on the clothes I found and Dana thought they were too big. She found me clothing in regular sizes.  I was thrilled.  Diane had some success as well.  But it’s easy when you’re a size 8.  I won the mystery discount competition, I had 40% off, Diane had only 20% off.  Dana let her use my card.  So the sale merchandise we bought was already 30% off and with the extra 40% we really scored.

All that happiness made us hungry so we got in the car, drove to Neiman’s and tried to park.  There is some major construction going on and spaces were limited.  What the hell, we parked at the valet.

Diane has fond memories at eating at the Neiman’s cafe with her mother.  We usually make it our lunch stop.  It’s a traditional place, aimed at ladies.  You are always given consommé to start along with a popover.  The menu is slanted towards salads.    They are very good.  We started talking about memories of the past.  Driving through her old stomping grounds made her a bit sad.  Everyone is gone now, most of the shops are different but the area has such history for her.  In the past she has shown me where her father practiced dentistry, where she worked at her first job, where several of her friends lived.  It is lovely.   I haven’t been back to my old neighborhood in suburban New York.  Too many ghosts.  It’s sad.  How quickly life flies.

We walked to Nordstrom’s did some lackluster shopping when an alarm sounded.  Then the loudpeaker came on and warned of severe weather.  I got an emergency text on my phone about tornados in the area and noticed that everyone in the store was looking at cell phones.  We all got the emergency warning!   We decided the danger was past when a bolt of lightning immediately followed by a crack of thunder so loud the floor shook told us otherwise.  We had coffee in their coffee bar and sat for a few minutes.  Diane, being adventurous, said it was time to go.  When we got back to the valet, it was pouring!   Luckily someone else had to get the car.

We looked at the sky and decided it was much lighter in the direction we were heading.   We hit massive rain storms two or three times on the drive home, but made it safely.

Cant wait until our next trip.  Scoring a bargain, consommé, popovers, but most of all, a day out with a good friend.