STOP
Why I Love…
When she’s not
traveling the
world, author
Elizabeth Gilbert
enjoys nesting
in her big sister’s
hometown
| BY MICHAEL HAMMETT
When best-selling
author Elizabeth
Gilbert returned
from a yearlong,
postdivorce, globe-trotting
adventure—chronicled in the
memoir Eat, Pray, Love: One
Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and
Indonesia—she settled into a quiet life in Philadelphia.
“For one lovely year, I had it all—a farmhouse in the
country, right in the middle of a great city,” Gilbert says. Her
rented 1700s-era home stood guard at the edge of a 500-acre
nature preserve in the northern part of the city. “I would
wake early and almost always start my day with a walk in the
woods,” she says. This marked the vagabond’s second residency in the City of Brotherly Love—the first was in the early
1990s when she was a 20-something hustling for freelance
writing gigs and bartending to pay the rent.
“I was pulled there by the draw of living near my sister
[writer Catherine Murdock],” she says. “And Philly lacks
the grinding, ambitious pace of New York, so I found that
people there had more time for each other.”
EAT
Rouge 2000
205 S. 18th St., Rittenhouse Row
215-732-6622
GQ magazine ranks Rouge among the
“Top 20 Burgers in America.” Gilbert
says, “I love them so much that I must
admit I’ve never even sampled a burg-
er anywhere else in Philadelphia.”
SHOP
Reading Terminal Market
12th and Arch, Center City
215-922-2317
Since 1893, this public market has
sold regional cuisine and exotic
fare (fresh Indian curries), plus
flowers, cookware and farm-fresh
organic produce.
After a few midmorning hours at the computer, Gilbert
would take a break and pedal her bicycle through the streets
of the Manayunk neighborhood (“It always reminded me
of Dublin, somehow”), stopping at one of her favorite places
to nosh, Le Bus (“A wonderful little bistro right on the river”).
She was raised on a Christmas tree farm in Litchfield,
Conn., and her parents ascribed to the self-sustaining
lifestyle—dad raised chickens and honeybees while mom
cultivated the garden and created
country couture for her brood. “I
once heard a saying that nobody
who thinks he is an eccentric is
actually an eccentric, but I wonder
how that related to my family, because I feel pretty sure my family
was eccentric,” she says.
After attending New York University, Gilbert traveled the world,
settling for a while in Wyoming,
where she began slow-churning the
short stories that would become her
first book, Pilgrims, which she refers
to as “my highest achievement.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Annie
Proulx called it the work of “a young
writer with incandescent talent.”
A former staff writer for Spin and
GQ, Gilbert has contributed to The
New York Times Magazine and Travel and Leisure, among
other publications. Hollywood optioned several of her pieces
over the years; one made it to the big screen—Coyote Ugly—
and last year, Eat, Pray, Love was optioned by Brad Pitt’s
production company for Julia Roberts.
“I am star-struck by Hollywood, so it still seems very
glittery and unreal to me,” Gilbert says.
Alas, the Philly lover had her fill of domesticity; in 2006
she turned in the key to the farmhouse and took to the skies
once again. But as history so often repeats itself, the restless
soul will likely make a return to her quasihometown, for
another extended stay.
“There’s nothing like the tradition of shared public green
spaces, which Philadelphia does so beautifully,” she says. “Try
finding a large, safe, quiet, wooded public park in Hanoi.”
STRETCH
Yoga Schelter
3502 Scotts Lane, East Falls
215-991-YOGA
Check out this hip, light-filled yoga
studio housed in a historic mill. The
studio, offering a range of classes in
the Vinyasa tradition, bills itself as “an
art studio for body, mind and soul.”
THINK
The Schuylkill Center
8480 Hagy’s Mill Road
215-482-7300
Gilbert loves morning walks in
this preserve. The sanctuary boasts
three miles of hiking trails; wetlands,
meadows and forest; and a bounty
of woodland creatures.
