GLOSSING OVER HOW WE ARRIVED AT THE AIRPORT, we arrived to the gate early, boarded the plane without incident, and made our way from beautiful Fort Wayne to Philadelphia. On board, I had a cup of recycled engine oil. It was hot and it was brown.

After arriving to Philadelphia (again, without incident), we got on the subway and got to the hotel, dropped our bags off, and made our way to a nearby restaurant recommended by the concierge called Marathon Grill. They had a limited breakfast menu but I was looking for something unique. It occurred to me that I’ve never had Eggs Benedict, so that’s what I ordered. I’ve always been afraid of “poached eggs” and “yellow sauce” (turns out it’s hollandaise, which is something I kind of like). More importantly, they had real coffee, and not just hot-brown.

Philadelphia
Philadelphia

It’s an open-face English muffin with a slice of ham, poached egg, and hollandaise. Simple. The eggs were somewhat fluffy, however, it was oil-less, which is quite nice. Breakfast foods are always so greasy and have the tendency to cause gastrointestinal distress (R19.7: the runs). The yolk is mostly cooked but not completely, so it’s a little runny. It mixes with the hollandaise quite well.

Emily had a smoked salmon platter with a bagel, capers, and fresh red onions. She didn’t let me try any. Mom had a croissant and a side of bacon. The croissant was flaky and buttery and frankly just perfect. When you ran it through in your hands it just came apart in different layers.

Philadelphia

Philadelphia
Mom’s croissant looked vaguely like the Hirschsprung colon in the Mutter Museum

As soon as we sat down, Emily looked around and said, “well, that trip wasn’t so bad” just as Mom had her butter knife out to split an Imitrex (a popular migraine medication). Well, we ate and then we left for the Mutter Museum, which was the entire reason we came to Philly.

The museum is a lot of medical artifacts and specimens. There’s a lot of gross stuff in there. The take-away lesson is that you were very lucky to have been born as normal as you are. Do you have a colon the size of an oil-drum? Is your brother fused to you at the face? Do you have dental caries from syphillis? Then quit whining!

Now, the bit that was glossed over: someone who shall remain nameless was running a few minutes behind this morning and everyone else overreacted (as they are wont to do) and we nearly had a full-on meltdown. Who schedules airplane flights at 6am?! Insert from the other Dr. Baltes: I bought the plane tickets to leave at 7:10 am to ensure that we could maximize our mini-vacation after ensuring from all parties that this time was feasible.  Christopher arrived at the airport at 6:40 am; which happened to be boarding time.  Thankfully anticipating that this might be an issue, I made sure he was TSA pre-checked to expedite the check-in process.  None of the three Dr. Balteses exchanged words prior to boarding or during the flight to allow things to “simmer down.”

Stay tuned, more to come! But now, it’s nap time.