[Robert Adams]

Well, I guess I’ll be just about the only one here to speak up for living in Philly although I moved to NJ via NYC about 30 years ago, so what do I know. I do get back to visit family & friends often though and lived about an hour north in Hunterdon County, NJ on the Delaware River for 15 years. An absolutely beautiful area and coming from where you are, you might like Bucks County, PA. Someone suggested going down 95 to Delaware and that is an option. The Brandywine area is as nice as Bucks, maybe even nicer..they have roads you can do some Sunday stretching on, but you will have to go out a ways toward the west.
Yes, Philadelphia probably doesn’t rate up there from where you are coming but it does have some major history and culture. It has the oldest theater in the country (Walnut St Theater), one of the best orchestras in the world and they play in one of two of the best designed buildings in the world; the Academy of Music and the Kimball Center. Ok, I’m not going any where near the sports teams that is definitely not a safe topic to bring up.
Philadelphia is a small town for as large as it is geographically. It’s far cheaper to live there than in DC or NYC. If you don’t have kids I would consider living in town. Screw having a car you don’t need it most of the time. If you really need a car you can rent a space either in a private yard or within an apartment building; plenty of buildings offer spaces. As for locations in center city, around Jefferson Hospital is nice; ‘Society Hill’ is drop dead gorgeous with all the brownstones and is the ‘old section’ of town built in the 1700 to 1800s. Queens Village is to and is about as old, if you can get by the name it is a nice area to. It borders on Little Italy and the market there is great and quite an experience (meant that in a nice way). Market Street also has the reading Terminal market which has everything from coffee to BVDs. Two other areas in town that are nice is Rittenhouse Square and out by the Art Museum.
There are several nice suburbs with train service, but like everywhere on the East Coast, there is NO PARKING ANYWHERE NEAR ANY STATION! Don’t even bother looking, it doesn’t exist! Swarthmore, Media, Newtown Square, Devon, Paoli, Haverford, Bryn Myr, Villanova, to mention just a few. Did anyone mention colleges, Philadelphia has probably the most per square mile of any city any where. Some are almost 300 years old like Uof P; some of the top museums in the country, the Uof P Museum rivals the British Museum, they have a planetarium Ben Franklin started, there must be close to 75 more museums to chose from, there is even an Edgar Allen Poe Museum. I could go on, but the point is, contrary to what people think who maybe have never lived in Philadelphia for any length of time, it’s far from being a dump and it’s been my experience nice people live there just like they do in the town you are living in now. You may scratch your head at some of the politics, but life does seem to go on in spite of them. I vote try it, you might just find you like it more than you thought you would!
Good luck!