Philadelphia on my mind

Naturally, there's been a lot of contemplation recently. Apart from anything else, I was pretty much flat out at work for most of last year so there wasn't a lot of 'me time'. Not that I'm complaining - it was a great year.

For some reason I've been thinking back to my time in Philadelphia. I spent a lot of time in Philadelphia from 2001-2005. At one point I even had a visa to allow me to work full time if I wanted. I used to fly over for a couple of weeks at a time, staying with my good friend Steven or in various hotels or apartments. After a while I started to use my spare time to explore the city and the area, and it started to feel like a second home to me.

Now Philly isn't the most beautiful city in America, and you wouldn't want to stray too far off the beaten track in some districts. But it has some beautiful parts and important historical landmarks, an amazing Museum of Art (the steps to the gallery are the ones that Rocky Balboa runs up in the original Rocky), Philly cheesesteaks and South Street.

It has the schuylkill river and the boathouses, its own twin towers and its bridges to New Jersey.

And it has The Eagles. Philadelphia is a real blue collar sporting city, with baseball, basketball, ice hockey and American football teams all in national leagues. In fact the Phillies are baseball's reigning world champions. But when it comes down to it Philadelphia is a football town. They'd swap the World Series tomorrow for another shot at the Superbowl. Can it happen this year? Maybe, but highly unlikely. I'll be watching on Sunday anyway in hope.

So where's this all heading? I was saying that I was thinking about Philly. Specifically, I was thinking about a time when I borrowed a car and was driving back through the city after a day out. The radio was on, I was cutting through the heart of the city, and I captured a few moments on video...