Let them eat (cup)cake.

Wow, I've been promising updates and photos for a while – time to deliver on promises!

So John and I have had some time more recently to explore Philly and all of its various delights. Yay Philly! Let me first let you know that, in terms of culinary delights, there is no shortage of cupcakes in this town. We have amused ourselves (and our palates) by engaging in an informal taste-test of the offerings. So far we've sampled from three different purveyors of fine, fine cupcakey goodness:

- First up, we tried Betty's Tasty Buttons or Betty's Speakeasy or Betty's Buttons or whatever they call themselves. John is a huge fan of their fudge sauces, but I'll be honest – their cupcake offerings were good, but not mind-blowing. On to offerings closer to home...

- Recently opened in Fishtown (our neighborhood) - over at Berks and Belgrade - is Whipped Bake Shop. Now, their cupcake (we sampled the chocolate + chocolate, because we're purists), was definitely high-quality... but even more out-of-this-world was their salted caramel chocolate brownie. Ohhhhhh, good stuff. Here's John sitting contentedly at the Schuylkill River Park post-brownie:

- Thirdly - and also not far from us - was Brown Betty Dessert Boutique. Again, a quality chocolate cupcake - but the real knock-out was the fruit-filled pound cake cupcake – ours was lemon. Mmmmmmmmm. (Side note: what's up with all the Bettys making cupcakes? Hm.) Anyway, two frosting-coated thumbs up for cupcake offerings in Philly! Whooo!!

Aside from cupcake sampling, we seem to have found ourselves in several cemeteries and parks of late. I guess that means we're giving fair time to both death and (plant) life, right? Or... something. Here are some photos, first of Palmer Cemetery, which is also in our little neighborhood in Fishtown (they're our local dead):

Down in Society Hill, we found the cemetery for Old St. Mary’s Church, where Commodore Barry (among other Revolutionary War-era and 19th-century luminaries) is buried:For some more history sans dead bodies, here’s Penn Treaty Park:

Here's another shot from the park – looks like the coast of Maine or something, no? In fact, no, it's just the "coast" of Pennsylvania.

We ran into a great community garden at Schuylkill River Park (where a nice French lady shared some of her chives and sage, yay!) There were still a surprising number of plants still hanging in there, including this tomato:Overall, man, autumn in this city is just great, I forgot how much I missed it. And as for art? Of course, there’s been art! I’ll get to that in another post, including in-depth coverage of my Goldilocks-like quest for a drawing group that's juuuuust right... in the meantime, here are some more photos of Fall in Philly:

It's gingko season AND slippery rail season. Stinky AND slippy.

Here's a view from our bedroom window. A tree grows in Fishtown!