First there was the almost-£80 bill for three cocktails and service at a speakeasy on New York’s Lower East Side that sent cartoonish tears running down my face, then late-night tacos and margaritas at some upscale Mexican (£50). I’d been in town less than eight hours and already I’d burnt through enough cash to make me want to pick up an American Gothic pitchfork.
I met a friend the next day, and the cost of living conversation was the same on this side of the Pond. Over brunch at cutesy Buvette in the West Village — a £30 bill for eggs royale, a juice and a tip — we got hot under the collar about mortgage rates, rental hikes and the way that dollars sort of blow out of your hands the moment you leave your hotel (£405 a night for my East Village pad).
Never have I been more invested in exchange rates than while walking around NYC with just a few coins spat out of the train ticket machine for company. Americans, naturally, are gleeful about long weekends in the UK, where our decimated currency means that everything to them is cut- price (£1 is now worth $1.23). It’s hard not to be annoyed with them for this.
Brits, though, still want that big-ticket American cosmopolitanism, the top restaurants and the historical monuments. So where do they go? The answer is Philadelphia, America’s founding city, 94 miles and a £15 train ride south of New York (amtrak.com). Like all good second — or in Philly’s case, sixth — cities, it’s wonderfully walkable, good value and has a smasher of a baseball team.
Philadelphia’s rising profile means that it has been steadily pulling in tourists — 36.2 million visited the city and wider region in 2021, just 19 per cent below its pre-pandemic peak, in 2019 — and a rash of new transatlantic budget flights means it’s even easier and cheaper to get to. It doesn’t hurt that the Best Places liveability data platform puts its living costs at 60 per cent of those in New York.
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Happily, it’s also one of those US cities that is a microcosm of the country. America’s “city of brotherly love” has a groomed clutch of downtown skyscrapers, a mega park (Fairmount; more than 9,000 acres), history (as the birthplace of the American Revolution), its own dish (Philly cheesesteak, naturally) and the type of energy that NYC does so well — the equivalent of plugging your fingers into a socket for a few days. Oh, and it’s nicer to your bank balance.
The place to start is Independence Hall, a gorgeous Georgian red- brick building where the Declaration of Independence and constitution were signed by founding fathers including Benjamin Franklin, a native who is deified in this city (80p; phlvisitorcenter.com). His name is everywhere — from the great-for-kids science museum Franklin Institute (£20; fi.edu) to Benjamin Franklin Bridge — but it’s in this assembly room that you feel his spine-tingling impact on the history of this nation.
Besides Independence Hall there is an embarrassment of historic artefacts in downtown Philadelphia — the Liberty Bell in the nearby Independence National Historical Park that rang when the Declaration of Independence was signed, America’s first bank and the excellent Museum of the American Revolution, with George Washington’s war tent inside it (£19.50; amrev museum.org). The grande dame where I’m staying — the ornate Bellevue Hotel, in the heart of downtown — is almost 120 years old and has hosted nearly all of America’s presidents, as well as the great and the good from its glittering society. Washington lays claim to American political muscle and NYC to culture, but Philadelphia is where the American dream started.
I soon realise that Philly’s American dream today looks a bit like booking a table at the Israeli skewer restaurant Laser Wolf in the zippy Fishtown neighbourhood (mains from £31.50; laserwolfphilly.com). It’s such a hot ticket that I can only score a counter seat at 5pm, but the food is so good — you choose a grill and get unlimited bowls of salatim side dishes and a soft serve ice cream to finish — that I forget I scoffed a Philly cheesesteak at the iconic Campo’s only a few hours earlier (£10.50; camposdeli. com). This is a city that really knows how to eat and drink well, whether that’s coffee from the local La Colombe Coffee Roasters (£3.50; lacolombe.com), grazing on shrimp, po’ boy sandwiches and blueberry scones at Reading Terminal Market (readingterminal market.org); or ordering smoky sazerac cocktails at the French-American joint Good King Tavern (cocktails from £10.50; thegoodking tavern.com).
Another way to save the subway fare (£2) is to walk. It’s a perfect autumn day when I visit and I loop through Love Park (Philly has co-opted the red “love” letters — great for selfies) and walk up the grand Benjamin Franklin Parkway, which is like a stroll through American civic life. There’s the Franklin Institute, the Free Library, the Barnes Foundation (Thurs-Mon, £20, tickets valid for two days; barnesfoundation.org) — home to one of the world’s greatest collections of impressionist art — and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Thurs-Mon, £20; philamuseum.org) crowning the “Rocky Steps” (as featured in the film).
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Autumn and winter are considered low season — hotel prices are lower than during spring and summer — and while it is undoubtedly cooler, the sky is clear. I can’t get enough of the sugar maples and chestnuts of Longwood Gardens, a Kew-style park a few miles out of Philly proper, while spring means tulips, wisteria and flowering trees (Wed-Mon, £20; longwoodgardens.org). America’s Garden Capital this certainly is.
In fact, the only thing scarier than the sky-high prices in New York is visiting the Eastern State Penitentiary (£14; easternstate.org), an abandoned jail that now runs intimate audio tours featuring inmates’ voices. Once the home of Al Capone (visitors can still see his cell), the jail also runs night tours in the summer and the popular Halloween Nights, an immersive horror show with five haunted houses and much goosebump-inducing theatre, in autumn. A visit is enough to turn your bones to dust in a way that otherwise only a £25 cocktail from a Manhattan speakeasy could.
Thanks, Philadelphia; I had twice the fun for half the price.
Cathy Adams was a guest of Discover Philadelphia (discoverphl.com). The Bellevue Hotel, part of the Unbound Collection by Hyatt, has room-only doubles from £185 (thebellevuehotel.com). British Airways has return Philadelphia flights from £364 (ba.com)
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