Woke up late today in Lawrenceville, New Jersey and have been nursing a pretty serious Dramamine hangover since. Yesterday, my flight left SeaTac at 6:25AM PST and I arrived at Chicago’s Midway airport around 12:30 GMT to a fairly crowded Southwest Airlines terminal. To my pleasurable surprise, the food court included a salad restaurant, whose name included the word “sprigs” but that’s all I can remember. A chatty pilot told me all about his favorite salad as I stood in line and multiple people after in my gate were extremely friendly and personable. Maybe it’s a Chicago thing? Or maybe, as I have always guessed, Seattle is just a quiet keep-to-yourself kind of place.
The flight to Philadelphia was only two hours with slight turbulence and a beautiful sunset. I sat next to a guy who worked in the consulting industry and graduated from University of Rochester in 2009, he was pretty intent on a job application and the elderly woman sitting on the aisle to his right was also intent on her novel. I fell in and out of a Dramamine induced sleep and managed AGAIN to miss the drinks/peanuts/snacks portion of the flight. Luckily I had dried mangoes stashed in my messenger bag.
After we touched down in Philly, I had a little bit of trouble finding my luggage carousel (I walked the wrong way) but found it just in time and met Margaret out on the curb. We drove north, through the city, and passed some beautiful bridges and the stadiums where the 76’ers play and the Philadelphia Eagles. Someday I’ll have to go back and visit Independence Hall and Valley Forge, but not on this trip.
Today, after eating breakfast, Margaret took me to see Trenton. Trenton used to be one of the industrial capitols of the country but is now much less prosperous. We drove by a several blocks of “row houses” which are basically like duplexes that have flat sides and concrete steps that extend from the porch squarely onto the sidewalk. We don’t really have anything equal in the PNW, but the tallness of the buildings reminds me of the houses in San Francisco that are very thin but have an elevation to them. The neighborhood of North Trenton is comprised mostly of working class Americans and also a fairly large Polish neighborhood. There is something very distinct about the East Coast that I haven’t been able to quite put my finger on. I did notice that all of the houses here are much older than houses in Seattle, the bricks and wood are weathered and seem like they carry this aged wisdom, but it’s not just that.
We stopped at a low building which hosts a Farmers Market but it was closed on Wednesdays so we headed over to Halo Farms. Halo Farms is a dairy, I think. The building itself has working packaging machinery that is churning along in the front window. On the right side of the store there is a long rectangular cooling section with every kind of milk you can imagine (cows milk) and several different kinds of fruity drinks like Lemonade and Orange Aide. In the center of the store they offer probably 30 different kinds of Ice Cream with flavors like Toasted Almond, and Peanut M&M. The funny thing about the building is that the walls from floor to ceiling are painted black. It obviously was an old farm building, but has been modified into this convenience type of store with gold framed oil paintings of bowls of fruit mounted on the slope of the ceiling. It also sells crackers and bread. I have never seen anything like it.
After leaving Trenton/South Lawrenceville we drove up to Princeton so that I could see the campus. I was expecting to see something similar to University of Washington or maybe UCLA in terms of the mixture of old and new buildings. Princeton is very old, and very beautiful. The wind picked up as we were walking around campus, which made things very cold, but we persevered and walked through numerous archways and down grand steps onto quad after quad. Most of the buildings are made of grey stone with high windows and castle like turrets. The campus cathedral is a giant stone and glass structure across from a statue of John Witherspoon (more later). Inside on both ends of the church are huge dark glass windows arranged in columns. And the side windows housed all of the saints, immortalized in stained glass. There was a very holy feel to the place, more so than I feel when I walk into the Seattle U Chapel of St. Ignatius, probably because of the size and realization that the cathedral is over two hundred years old.
The rusty-teal iron statue of John Witherspoon stands mightily across the courtyard from the cathedral, he stands with his left hand resting on a book that’s resting on the back of what looks like an Eagle. John Witherspoon was a clergyman in Scotland before he immigrated with his family to New Jersey after he was offered the position of President of what was then called the “College of New Jersey” in Princeton. He was inaugurated as the sixth president in 1768 and taught students like James Madison and Aaron Burr about the philosophical freedoms of Christian men. He was the only clergyman and university president at the continental congress and the only one to sign the Declaration of Independence in 1776. He was also present at the ratification of the United States Constitution. All in all, very interesting man.
We walked into a brown building with high windows next to the cathedral that had a “center for the humanities” sign in the entrance, after veering off down a side passage we found the most beautiful library that I have ever seen. There were little overstuffed leather chairs in the center of the domed room perched upon a hardwood floor that had a dark and light wood stripe pattern. There were about six alcoves with floor to ceiling bookshelves and velvet cushioned window seats, high stained glass windows that you could look through from the second level. The eaves were ornate and the domed ceiling was a stained glass star. If I had gone to Princeton I don’t think that I would have ever left that room.
The Boro of Princeton itself is very “posh” as Margaret called it. The homes are all upscale mansions (even the Governor’s mansion is in Princeton! Well in the Princeton Township) nothing like the row houses in Trenton. Princeton is very much a college town, all the shops downtown are in the first floor of these beautiful colonial stone mansions. All of the shops are upscale like Ann Taylor or Ralph Lauren, no funny little cheap stores like we have in Seattle. Overall, Princeton is fascinating and a little bit snooty; very much the Ivy school town I thought that it would be.
Going into New York City tomorrow morning, more later.
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