West Philadelphia and the cusp of University City

One of the things I like about Philly is all the things to explore in the city. There are many museums, and historically relevant places so if your a history nut this is the town for you (Independence Hall and the Mutter Musuem come readily to mind)

I love the architecture throughout town, but especially in Center City. When one walks downtown, it appears as if you’re looking at a magnificent painted background. The buildings still display the workmanship of an era gone past, and this is especially salient to me because I bemoan the loss of beautiful architecture.

On a related note, one of my favorite things to do is to just to walk around. Philly is a fairly easy town to navigate ionce you realize that the zero point for north-south notation is Market Street, and for east-west notation is Broad Street. I frequently do not know where I am, but I am never lost. I can find my way home from anywhere in the city, and that is certainly a comforting thing to whether one is a homebody or a nomad.

I live in University City/West Philly, close to the Penn campus and it’s a really nice part of town for a number of reasons. The neighborhood is as charming as the day is long-a farmer's market comes to Clark Park every Thursday and Saturday. There are several pizza joints around, all of which are good. In fact, I have become fairly acquainted with the folks at Fiesta, which is a Bangladeshi-run, Mexican-named Italian pizza restaurant. How can you not love that? Also, there are plenty of Eithiopian restaurants, which combine the maximum of both health and taste. Delectably salubrious indeed!

The trolleys of West Philadelphia have a rather quaint attraction to them, until you realize four of the five trolley lines converge at 40th street. This often results in "trolley jams", which can make a morning commute across town a little more unreliable. If you do work east of 40th street and need to use the trolley, make sure to build in enough time in your commute to compensate for any delays.

Alex, 18, corps member, SAP Team at Elkin Elementary