One of the first few things I realized right before I landed in Philadelphia was how low all the buildings looked from the skies. After landing and walking around Philly, a majority of the buildings here have significantly fewer levels than the high-rise buildings I was used to back in Singapore. Another thing I realized is how neat the roads are constructed here. The roads all intersect in a grid-like manner where I can walk from one place to another in a straight line along the roads. It might be a weird thing to point out but where I’m from, due to the space constraints of our small island, we do not have straight roads spanning such long distances because another building would just get in the way.
That being said, the abundance of land here has meant that I have had to walk a lot more on a day-to-day basis just to and from school. I have enjoyed wandering the neighborhoods here and the weather recently has been pleasant enough to take really long walks. This has led me to stumble upon Fairmount Park, a 45 minute walk from Drexel. I guess I must have been very lucky because I managed to catch the cherry blossoms in the park. The views in the park were absolutely breathtaking. I had decided to walk over to Fairmount Park in between classes and was just amazed at how beautiful the park was.
Singapore does have parks that are located fairly near most public housing buildings but none of them have rows of stunning cherry blossoms or a huge expanse of greenery. This might be due to the climate and lack of space in general so it is very refreshing to be able to witness parks this big. There were rows and rows of cherry blossoms, gazebos, and numerous potential picnic spots located all around the park. I didn’t even realize that I had spent almost 3 hours just walking around this park. It was only when the alarm I had set as a reminder for classes went off that I had to unwillingly trudge back to Drexel.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time taking in the sights and it was a welcome break from school work. While cherry blossom season may be over, I do still highly recommend checking out Fairmount Park if you ever need to just relax somewhere near Drexel.
