Day Trip to Philly

On Wednesday, a colleague and I took the train up to Philadelphia to work on a presentation I'm giving today and next Wednesday. We got on the Acela by Amtrak in the morning, because I also have a proposal going on overlapping with the briefing preparation - doesn't anybody know it's the holidays?

The colleague we met with has been coming down to DC for 2 days a week since October, so we thought we might turn the tables a bit and mix it up with our trip up. We boarded at DC's Union Station. Here are a few views inside.

There is a holiday tradition to put up a model train display, and this year a Norwegian village is featured. A couple of memories always come to mind when I am in the station and walking through the great hall - my mother and aunt always talk about coming through here when they were young. Those trains took them back and forth to Greensboro, I think.

Also, I thought for a moment I'd take a photo of the Pizza Uno stand - my friend Tony took me there my first night in DC after I moved up from Florida, way back when. I decided the phone cam wouldn't do justice to such a historically significant joint.

The Acela was great - just about 90 minutes, and I had the quiet space to concentrate on getting a page and a half written on the proposal - my goal was to get 5 pages done on the train up and back. Also, we discovered that John McCain was in the car in front of us; he and a couple of advisors were on the way to NYC, I guess for the Stephanopolis interview that will air on Sunday.

My colleague told me that on one of her trips, she sat in the same row with the personalities from that Extreme Makeover show, so the train must be the preferred way to travel for ABC people.

I was looking forward to walking through 30th Street Station in Philly here are some photos inside the station. For some reason, I really enjoy this space - I have had a couple of projects up here, and at least two long weekend getaways - for some reason it strikes me as just the right entry to the City of Brotherly Love.

Our company's offices were downtown, and they set us up in a windowed 16th conference room to work in, so we opened the window a bit to let the city noise come up into the room. We squeezed out a plan for recapping 1.4 million square feet up there that day, including 200K sf of data center. We'll see if we've got something the client likes...first presentation is at 10 this morning.