Some Cool City Ways To Spend Hot City Days

When it comes to imagining how she would like to spend a beautiful summer day off from work, Janet Saltzman can paint a pretty picture. A librarian at the Free Library's Mercantile branch, the Center City resident settled into her chair behind the library's information desk recently, thought for a few moments, then described her ideal day:

"I'm going to find a nice, lively place to lunch," Saltzman said, her eyes turning dreamy.

"I'm going to sit in one of the parks down there and then walk around Society Hill, and probably go down to Penn's Landing and look at the river - or even take one of those Rainbow (boat) tours of the river. Last summer, I did that - an hour's cruise on the Delaware. And then I would get off the boat, and I would walk on South Street. And in the evening, I would go to the Cinematheque at Temple, because I'm a member there, and I love to go there on summer nights."

Now, that is an itinerary that would soothe nerves rattled by the workweek. But Saltzman's is hardly the only Philadelphia story. Consider: You have awakened to copacetic summer weather - if you can imagine that after 14 straight days of 90-degree heat - and decided not to hang at the home front impersonating a sofa.

Philadelphia, teeming with enticing possibilities, awaits you.

Where to go?

What to do?

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Topping the popularity charts for Philadelphia summertime attractions is Fairmount Park. Enormous, user-friendly and, above all, green, the park neatly accommodates nearly anyone's lifestyle or biorhythms. Lamont Steptoe, a Germantown resident who works as theater manager and poetry consultant for the Painted Bride Art Center, has a crush on part of the park's Wissahickon section.

"I would go to Valley Green, and if I had my fishing license, I would go fishing for some trout (in Wissahickon Creek)," Steptoe said, "and take a couple of books along to read, and my writing journals, since I'm a poet. I would also have my camera, since I'm a photographer. And I would most likely take my 3-year-old daughter with me, and go up there and spend the day, just reading, fishing, walking around, looking at nature, finding rocks, finding unusual tree branches and old tree stumps and things like that, and just sort of being out there with the natural elements."

Ah, nature.