The last couple of days I had the car

The last few days I had the car.

As I said I didn’t leave again until Monday morning.
Caroline and I got out of bed at the same time, had breakfast and when she went out to go to work, I took a shower and got dressed.
I didn’t have any definite plans, the only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to drive a really long distance anymore.

So I decided to go to Reading, to stay at a motel there and keep that as a base for whatever I decided to do while I was there.
I used Mapquest to find out how to get to Reading and through that website I also found a motel. For this motel we had already found a coupon in our brochure, but that is only for one night and through this website it was even cheaper!
So I booked it for 3 nights and got directions.

Reading is about an hour’s drive from Philadelphia, so that was ok. I checked my email before I left and I was out of the door by 10am.
The weather was cold and dark this Monday, good day for driving around!! Everything went well, until I got to the Business Route 222, which I thought I needed to take. So I got off at an exit, turned around and took that business route…but it didn’t look like I was going the right way! So I stopped and I asked for directions at a Dollar Store and she told me to go back to the main highway and I would see the signs for the roads I needed.
And sure enough, right after the exit I took to turn around, was the exit I was looking for… O well, it took a little while longer, but I got there in the end!

It was around noon when I got there, lunch time for the staff, but someone was there to check me in and I even got to go to the room already. I had asked for a room on the opposite side of the highway, because having those cars driving by in the night is not going to help me get to sleep.
So I went upstairs and couldn’t get into the room, the key was working, but it seemed like the door was locked from the inside. I went back down to ask at reception and the guy went with me to see what was wrong.
Turned out I had to turn the handle up instead of downward like you would normally do!

I dumped my stuff and found out there was a post office in the area, so I looked on Mapquest to see how to get there. Didn’t look to difficult, but I managed to go wrong somewhere anyway! But in the end I found it…and they didn’t have the international stamps I was looking for…err!!

The motel was close to a couple of malls and restaurants, I didn’t feel like doing anything else that day and the weather wasn’t all that great, so I decided to go shopping. I went to Wallmart, found a Dollar Store (always nice to find little things!) and at Sears I found a grey pair of pants I need for work. At a food court I got some chicken teriyaki and took it back to the motel with me. Didn’t feel like sitting in a restaurant for dinner today. Watched some tv and went to bed when the movie was over.

The stay at this motel included breakfast, which was pretty good here! They also had the waffle makers, so I was happy!!
But before I had breakfast, I went to the desk to ask if it was possible to change rooms, because I really couldn’t sleep!! Not only were the cars going by all night, there was also some noise in the bathroom. It sounded like the fan was on, but it wasn’t and the toilet flushed for no reason sometimes.
I mean I understand motels are next to highways, which makes them easy to find, but if it is at all possible I like to sleep at the back of the building!
And it worked!! Ok so I only got to move a couple of doors down the hall, but it was further away from the highway and it did make a difference!

For this Tuesday the weather forecast wasn’t all that promising either, not that I had any big plans…I was just kind of tired.
A while back we had found a brochure of a bookstore in Harrisburg, so I decided to go there. Harrisburg is also only an hour from Reading, so it was nicely in the middle!

I just took my time that morning, don’t remember what time I left either. But I found that bookstore and it was huge!!!!
When you walk through the door there’s a little bar to the right and there is a seating area with some bookcases. Then there are 3 floors and the top floor connects to the other end with a gallery. Everything was full with books, it was really cool!!!
Then there was also a basement, which was full of books, the entire size of the building!!!! They also had some rare prints downstairs, which were really beautiful!!

I had browsed around and got me a stack of books, I got something to eat and then I got some tea and sat down to look through them all.
But in the end I only took one! The guy that helped me at the register asked me if I had found everything and I said that I had found more than this, but that it wouldn’t fit into my bag. Where upon he says that he could give me a bag if I needed one, so I laughed and said I was talking about my suitcase!!!
It was funny, turned out that he had lived in Heidelberg when his dad was stationed there in the Army!
Which is where I had been a couple of times, while working on the rivercruise ships!! Small world!

I had seen online that there was an H&M in the neighborhood. I had seen some grey paints there while I was in Philadelphia and thought it would be good to try those on now, so that if they fit better I could return the one I had bought at Sears. Before I left this morning, I had already checked to see how to get there from the bookstore, so I went out and started to go there…but I don’t know what went wrong, I couldn’t find it!! I kept going around in circles and I just couldn’t find it!
Finally I had it and went to a Barnes & Noble bookstore, not to look at the books, but I went to their Starbucks to get some tea and use their wifi to find my way back to Reading.

It was already 4pm, almost half past 4 and it rush hour was well on its way! So I found the route, wasn’t all that too far from where I was and left the bookstore.
Sure enough when I was on my way to the highway, I found the exit I was looking for to get to the H&M store!!!!
I don’t know what was wrong, but I seemed to have lost my sense of direction…or maybe I was just really tired!!

It was already raining during the day, but now on my way back there was this fine misty kind of rain, the kind that makes you unable to see further than the car in front of you.
Very exhausting to drive around in that!
But I did managed to get back to the motel, where I went to the food court and got some chicken nuggets and waffle fries at Chicken ‘Lil I think it’s called. I like their adds with the cow saying we have to eat more chicken. But I wasn’t all that thrilled about their food!! The nuggets were really small, McDonalds has bigger ones and the waffle fries were just weird. The potatoes were not peeled before they cut them and they were really big.
O well, it was food and I was hungry, didn’t feel like going back either.

Wednesday morning started with waffles again, I really like those!
No real plans for today either, but I had read about the Reading Public Museum before I came here, said they had Singer Sargent, Degas and Cassat paintings, which are some of my favorite artists so I thought that would be a good way to spend a rainy day.
Good thing was that it wasn’t more than a 10 minute drive from the motel, so that was even better!

The museum wasn’t all that big and the entrance fee was also pretty good. They had some engravings one by Abrecht Dürer, a German artist who also painted. They were really beautiful! They are really small, but so detailed it’s amazing!

Then I went to the top floor to look at the paintings I had come for, but when I got there I walked into a lot of huge crates!!!
The one wing of that floor was closed, because the crates were for a new exhibit. Then the hallway was full of crates, but parts of the other wing were also full of crates, so it was hard to see the paintings….Plus my favorites were nowhere in sight!!!

Then the first floor there were several rooms filled with different items, such as armor, Pennsylvania German items, Greek and Egyptian items with a real mummie! There were North American Indian displays and a lot of stuffed animals. O and for the kids there was a hands on section with Thomas the train.

The person that created this museum, I have already forgotten his name, started collecting things when he was 6 years old. He has gotten a lot of butterflies and when he was an adult he started collecting even more through his work and travels. All of this with the idea in mind that people can learn more from seeing something than reading about it.
O yeah and this guy is sitting behind a desk in the lobby of the museum….well, not really, but there is a wax statue sitting there depicting him…and he talks too!!! I walked by the desk to look at something, when all of sudden that statue started talking!!! Scared me to death!!

In the end I had asked the guy at the register where I could find all of the paintings I had read about and he told me that they don’t put everything on display at once, they have different exhibitions…I thought it was a shame really and I thought it would have been nice that they had told me before I went upstairs that there were a lot of big crates there too!

Anyway, I still managed to look around until about 1:30pm, when I thought it was time to get something to eat. But the museum didn’t have a restaurant or anything, so I drove back to the malls at the motel. On my out there I took the highway, but on the way back things looked familiar, so I took that route back.

I was standing in front of a traffic light, when a police car came up with his sirens on. So I moved over to let him pass. He didn’t have to go far, because on the opposite lane there was a lady with a car that had just had an accident. So this cop closed off that lane from this end and another cop did the same at the other end. Meanwhile I was still standing there, not sure wether I could drive passed or not. It wasn’t like they were getting out of their car to help move us along, so I just passed really slowly.
And after a couple of blocks, two more police cars came driving by with their sirens on, as if the two that were already there, couldn’t handle it!!

I had lunch at a burger place where a very cranky lady worked. So I had my lunch and left as soon as I could! I didn’t feel like doing much, so I went back to the motel, watched some tv and had a little nap.
Around 6pm I went back to the food court, but stopped at some arts & crafts stores I had seen earlier. They are huge and they have everything you can think of as in Do it yourself supplies!!
Makes me want to quit my job and work on projects to sell!!!

This time I got some pizza and ate it while watching Lethal Weapon I.
O that morning I had heard some people talking, which sounded familiar, but I had to listen twice before I figured out they were Dutch. From the East where they have an accent no one but them understands! Then when I went to bed, I heard them again, because of course they thought they were the only ones in the building! Talking loud and the doors have these things on them that make them close so you don’t have to pull them, but it would be nice if you hold the door while it closes, because they always slam shut!! But of course they didn’t do that!!! It was a great night!

Thursday morning was my last morning with waffles! I had to go back to Philadelphia to return the car.
Check out was noon, but on my way out there I had already seen some road work going on, so I thought I’d get out of there early.
I was packed and ready to go at 11am. Got some gas along the way and did pretty good, even with the road work!
But then suddenly everything came to a stop. Not sure what it was at first, but there were fire department trucks coming by and ambulances. Then we were all directed to the left lane and when I drove passed it turned out to have been an accident….but it was kind of strange. There was only one car, it was upside down and I couldn’t see if there was still someone in there or if they had managed to get out. With all of this medical personnel you would think there must have been some major collision!!!

Luckily I was pretty much in front of the traffic jam it caused, so I got out of it pretty quick.
I also didn’t have much trouble getting into Philadelphia this time! While I was watching tv this week I had learned that because of the NFL Draft they had closed down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, which is a major road here. So that explained why it was soo busy the other days, because people had to find alternative routes.
But today was pretty good and I got to the house ok. I had wanted to park the car in front of the garage, so I could take out my stuff. But there was already a car parked there, so that didn’t work. I did find a space in the street, but didn’t have a permit, so I had to move fast to avoid getting a ticket!

I got my stuff out, went into the house, dumped everything, went to the bathroom and put on another pair of shoes, because it was hot again today and I got out!!
I didn’t time it, but I did pretty good!!!

As I came into the house, there was no one there, but they had been sanding the floor downstairs and of the room on the first floor. Great all of that dust in the house!!

Anyway, I filled up the car and drove back to the 30th street station. This morning I had already checked how to get there from the house, but decided to go there by the Expressway. Last week I had already taken that exit to get to Caroline, so I thought this would be better than going through the city. And I was glad I did, because when I walked back to the house later, Market street was jammed!!

At the rental return they started the car, to see if the tank was full. Walked around the car to see if there was any damage and since all was good, I could go upstairs and get my receipt.
The guys asked if the car was ok, so I told them it was, but it didn’t like going up any hills! You really had to step on it, but even then it didn’t pick up speed, so in the end we just stayed in the slow lane!
I asked them about the NFL Draft, thought it was something like they do with soccer at home, picking teams to make a pool. But this was where college football players got drafted by professional football teams, so that was a pretty big deal.

Before I started driving when I picked up the car, I wrote down the mileage and it said 32895. Then before I handed in the keys, I wrote down the mileage again, so I could see how many miles we had been driving. The end result was 34681 miles, which means we have driven 1786 miles, which is about 2874 kilometers, so we did pretty good!!!

I had some lunch at a food court at the station, walked around a bit and discovered a post office, so I got some more stamps.
Then I walked back to the house via a couple of stores! It was really hot and this way I could cool off a bit before moving on. I got some dinner for that evening, wasn’t sure if we had anything left and I got back to the house around 4:30pm.
The floors had gotten a new coat by that time, but there were no signs saying we couldn’t walk on it yet, there was nothing on the floor to protect it and there was no one there to ask, so I just tiptoed over from the front door to the stairs. It was pretty dry already, but it was still sticky. And the smell was awful!! I opened all of the windows in our room, but was afraid to leave the door open, because that would bring in the smell!
Later on I heard Amy open more windows in the house, which only helped a little bit by that time.
Caroline came back around 6pm, we weren’t hungry yet, so we just talked a while. Had hotdogs for dinner, because we didn’t really feel like cooking.

We didn’t go to bed all that late, but we kept talking and laughing for a while longer after we had turned off the lights, killed a mosquito too!
At some point during the night I moved the matrass in front of the open window to get some fresh air, because that smell was really bad lying on the floor like that!!!
Of course there was a draft there, since all of the windows were open, but at least there was fresh air. And there was another mosquito, we still don’t know how they came in here, but I think I must have hit it at one point, because it was quiet after that!
We had a great night….NOT!!

Great to have that right before going to New York, but that will be another story!!
(didn’t think this story would be this long, because I haven’t done all that much, but I still managed to turn this into 8 pages!!)

Love
Linda