Manayunk is a neighborhood in Philly that used to be a small town but was absorbed in the 1800’s, though it still keeps its own identity, like certain other neighborhoods I have known. They have an annual arts festival where they close Main Street and a hundred thousand people show up and it’s pretty nuts. When I took the above picture, we had gotten to the top of the hill and I thought, “Okay, here’s the turnaround point” and then I looked over the hill and saw all this.

I didn’t take pictures when I was driving around because, duh, I was driving, but Manayunk is built on the banks of the Schuylkill and is all steep, narrow streets with buildings made out of all kinds of crazy things. This was not one of the streets with much character, and I kind of failed to capture the hilliness, but I guess that’s what Street View is for. We drove around Manayunk a little and decided taking the shuttle was a better idea, crossed the river to Bala Cynwyd and rode a school bus back to Manayunk.

I got a little bit of picture-taking from the bus window, but the bus pretty much just took us down Main Street and not up and down the steep twisty streets which, honestly, would have ended in disaster and not pictures. Anyway, Pennsylvania is full of enormous old stone bridges (and arches. We passed so many driving through the park on the way to Manayunk (we sort of took the scenic route because I-76 was at a standstill… I am not used to cities with heavy weekend traffic downtown yet), but again, I was driving. We’ll have to go back - Fairmount Park is full of interesting stuff, including the Philly zoo.

We ate lunch in a microbrewery in the basement of a building (or several buildings, I think) on the river side of Main Street. You must be this tall to not drown in a storm, I guess. There’s no marker for Sandy, so I guess they got flooding on the Schuylkill worked out?

And yes, Nate is wearing my booney hat because he didn’t bring headgear, we forgot to put the sunscreen back in the van, and I have hair long enough to not get a sunburn on the back of my neck.

I am told these are really disappointing, which is disappointing because the idea of being able to order warm cookies on demand amuses me.

Nathan was very excited to see these all along Main. They’re solar-powered trash compactors, and I’m pretty sure as soon as he saw them he was looking all around for things to throw away. Alas, even when folks dumped a substantial amount of fast-food trash they didn’t get it to trigger.

This bridge finally marked the end of the amazingly long show, at which point we were halfway done. I have made pretty good progress on my trucker tan, since we were on the shady side of the street coming back so only my left arm got the sun.

Overall, it was a great show. I didn’t take many pictures of the actual wares since most artists are sensitive about that, but it was very high-quality stuff, yet still a nice range of prices. Nate picked up a slightly scuffed handmade book, Carl picked up some pottery, and I picked up… hmm, a few gift items I can’t mention. And a lot of inspiration. Definitely have to finish getting the craft room set up.