Philadelphia, PA – I didn’t have to travel far for this weeks road trip. In fact, I didn’t even need to start my car up (which happens to be further from where I live than this week’s destination). Just a few blocks from my house is the Mummers Museum (not to be confused with the Mütter Museum) and for some time now I’ve been saying I should drop down for a visit.
You may ask what a Mummer is. I’ve been asking this same question for years. Before going to the museum I could only tell you 2 things for certain about Mummers, and they were:
- Covered in feathers and sequins Mummers come out every New Years Day to parade down Philadelphia’s Broad Street.
- Don’t talk smack on Mummers to a native Philadelphian because you might as well be insulting their mother, or the Eagles. Philadelphian’s love the Mummers, even if the only thing they know about them is that they parade down Broad Street on New Years Day.
Now that I’ve been to the museum I can tell you a whole lot more!
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Tacoma, WA – Dale Chihuly’s Bridge of Glass connects Tacoma proper with the Museum of Glass. And if it wasn’t for the Bridge of Glass, the Museum of Glass would be like any other museum out there. In fact, I’d give a pass on the museum and just head on over to the bridge. It will save you the entrance fee and the only (slightly) unique thing you’ll see inside the museum is a team of glass blowers making giant apples, or other a sundry chakies to sell at the museum store.
The Bridge of Glass, however, is worth the visit. It’s not a bridge made of glass, like I desperately hoped (in my mind I pictured a giant amorphous Chihuly glass bridge that you could walk on and somehow withstood the elements and thousands of people walking on it), but instead it’s filled with Chihuly glass well worth a small fortune. Although slightly disappointing, because it’s filled with glass instead of made out if it, you’ll get over it as you see the plethora of Chihuly in a row and overhead.
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Fremont, WA – My last stop on my walking tour of Fremont was “Waiting for the Interurban,” a strange little statue of people waiting for the bus and dressed… well differently almost every hour. I must have seen then in at least three outfits while I was about. It’s appearently tradition for the folks of Fremont to dress these poor commuters up as they see fit. And directly behing them is another pile of cloths. I’m not sure if they were the ones they were just wearing or if they’re the next intended outfit, but it’s like a Walmart for the less fortunate back there!
The Interurban statues have their own nifty little but stop complete with coverage, I guess so their fancy duds don’t get wet, and are on an island in the middle of the street all on their own. In fact they’ve got the nicest bus stop I’ve seen in or out of Seattle! Of course no bus goes past. I guess that’s supposed to be the poetic irony of the statue, but something tells me it would be a little more awesome if they had the opportunity to mingle with the regular commuters and feel their pain.
