mural walk.

for my birthday my aunt planned a trip for me and her to walk the philadelphia mural mile tour and we were finally able to go this past friday (i was hoping to get a nice fall day, instead we got stuck with 95 degree weather...but it didn't ruin the tour at all!). philadelphia has an enormous amount of murals throughout the city and the mural arts program is one of the best city mural programs in the country. so since the mural mile is in center city, and there were a few other ones that i really wanted to see that weren't on the tour, my aunt and i started by driving to a few murals outside downtown - starting with half-tank, a mural of philadelphia painted on a large oil tank. this one was a little hard to get close to, so this isn't my photo - but it was one of my favorites:

then we went to the peace wall which was also beautiful - but not quite as large as i had imagined...this actually happened many times throughout the tour - but then again some were also larger than i had thought!

after we found a few more murals...we headed downtown and started the walking tour! there were quite a few on the tour by david guinn which i really enjoyed...including one of each of the seasons...except for summer since it is to be painted this fall!

and he also had another one called gimme shelter:

and these are a couple others that i enjoyed:

 

what i think is so awesome about this next one is that the brick all around the edge of the mural is painted...from afar and even up close it doesn't look like that at all...sick!

and these last couple are other ones we went to go find that weren't on the tour...but ones we really wanted to see!

 so that was our day! we of course stopped in to redding terminal market and bought a cannoli at terminis - they are the best cannolis (sorry to mike's up in boston!)!! it was really fun to see the different murals...and it is always nice to wander around the city for the day! thanks aunt linda!

oh and this is a shot of my aunt's new puppy maggie...isn't she a cutie??