Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts

Today was the PIFA, hosted mainly on Broad Street.  Most of the street shuts down to pay homage to all the local theaters, artists, street performers and even some restaurants that turn food into art...(Brasserie Perrier, yum) 
 Today was more like fall weather then Spring, so with jeans and sneaks we took to the speedline to check out what they had to offer.  It was a nice day to walk city blocks because it wasn't too hot to be comfortable, and thank goodness for that because this draws such a large crowd and I don't do well with smells of hundreds of people. 
 By far the street performers shined.  We saw a performance done by two men in tights (that hardly ever seems ok to me) on a trampoline, one where you as the guest could sign up to learn, in front of a crowd, to swing on a trapez- and be tossed in the air!  There were three stages that offered musical and drum performances.  And then our favorite- street walkers...

She was beautiful! She stayed perfectly still until they played angelic music over the speakers and she slowly moved while standing in the fountain and water started  cascading out of each of her finger tips.  She kept everyones attention the entire time.

She walked among the crowd on her stilts while the fountain girl did her performance.  She found her way to a tree and lifted her arm to it, as to make them one.  Some people walked right by her not realizing.



Only time I ever saw grass right in the middle of Broad.  They laid sod for two city blocks to give people a place to eat and relax.

  We skipped the street carts of hotdogs and long lines attached to the better food tents and walked a couple blocks away to eat at Fado.  On our walk back to the speedline we stumbled on a large Ross and tried our hand. This is a shot of our resting outside of the store with our little bag of treasures.  I was sitting on a bench and that is Ants head that was overtaken by the 6:00 sun.

you can only really see our feet in this shot, but I love it.

We did find a small theater group that will be putting on a musical we would both want to see, The Great American Trailer Park. The picture of the three ladies with blond hair, dark roots and super tight shirts that were tanning themselves in front of the trailers is what sold Ant.  We also got a free tickets to Helium comedy club.  If you don't mind squeezing into mounds of people this festival is worth you time.  While I did enjoy it, and I always look for a reason to walk around outside, it did remind me that I am not a city girl.  I would much rather wake up on a quiet lake somewhere and hear my thoughts then be crammed into a city with too much of everything around.  But for a visit, this was perfect.