Have you ever been to Philadelphia? Since it's close to Joisy, we go now and then for a weekend. My wife likes it a lot. We went on Friday the 8th and just got back today, Sunday the 10th.

Our favorite meal there this weekend was at Sang Kee Peking Duck House on 9th Street near Vine, in Chinatown. It looks a bit like a hole in the wall, doesn't have that relaxing fine cuisine type atmosphere, but the food is really good. It's up there with what you'll find in Manhattan's Chinatown. They don't prepare the Peking duck pancakes for you, it's a do-it-yourselfer. We got half a duck for two people and it was fine. We also got a really good soup there. Thumbs up.

By contrast, we tried two other Asian restaurants in Chinatown and they couldn't come anywhere near Sang Kee Peking Duck House. All of them were on 9th Street. One was Joe's Coffee House or something like that, believe it or not a Chinese restaurant touted by the guidebooks. They have several pages of coffees in the back of the menu. It is more of a hole in the wall than Sang Kee is. We tried their house special soup, and their dumplings, and I wouldn't recommend the place. It was okay, that's the best I could say for it. Thumbs down.

The big loser on 9th Street was Rangoon, the only Burmese restaurant I've ever been in, or heard of. Burma, you know, the horrible little country that now calls itself Myanmar and is ruled by a military junta that is sadistic, greedy, everything a country isn't supposed to be. It's the kind of country that people think of when they praise America. You wouldn't want to live in a shithole like Myanmar would you?

We tried three different things in Rangoon, and only one of them was good enough to give the most tepid thumbs up, a 6 out of 10, the crispy tofu. Must admit, it was half decent. The salad with shrimp and other stuff was just plain bad tasting, and the noodle dish with this and that in it was mushy and absolutely nothing. Both get 3 out of 10, if that. I really wanted to see what Burmese food was like, and unfortunately I did, I guess. Maybe you'd like the place better if you ordered one of the hot and spicy dishes that fill up the menu, if you like your mouth lit up. My wife and I don't, so we didn't order those.

The other big meal we had was in the Hilton Garden Hotel on the 10th floor. It was a complimentary breakfast buffet - if you ask for it at the desk when you check in. It costs nearly $20 otherwise. I thought since they were giving us a free one, it would just be the raw basics, some cereal, a do it yourself waffle maker, some muffins and pastries. But to my surprise it was a good breakfast buffet. Made to order pancakes or waffles or some nice french toast, any kind of eggs, bacon, sausage, fruits and melon. The only drawback was that it was strictly a breakfast buffet so there were no lunch type things like chicken or pasta. It's not worth what they charge but it's a good breakfast.

The rest of our meals were at our favorite, the Reading Terminal Market on Arch and 12th, right next to the Hilton and the Convention Center. There are so many stalls there. Not a lot of seating though, particularly at busy times. We had a good Philly cheesesteak sub at Rick's, and some good desserts at different places, and a good turkey dinner with side dishes, and some good cheeses, and something they call sweet bologna, which is exactly that and interesting. Rick's is a pigsty though. There are very few tables and stools to sit on, the tables are filthy, nobody cleans them off all day. You can get a good Philly cheesesteak elsewhere, outside this market.

There's some good shopping in Philly. They have some clothing stores that are really cool. And some of the clothes are really cheap too. It's not just buying clothing inexpensively. It's buying really cool clothing inexpensively. Walk along Market Street in the center of town.

My wife commented that she can see why they call Philly "the city of brotherly love". They have a lot of Chinese, a lot of whites, a lot of blacks, really a lot of all three, and from what we saw it is a great mix of people who are nice and friendly to each other.

We were in Chinatown on 8/8/08 when the Beijing Olympics was starting. I didn't expect what I saw. The entire Chinese community was freaking out. They were filling the streets and excited as hell. They had a huge tv screen broadcasting the Olympics. They had a block with police barricades and there were ping pong games and gymnastics going on. Chinatown was Beijing Olympics crazy and so proud of their homeland. I figured that they left China to go to Philly so it wouldn't be like that, but it was like that.