Philly - A Little East Coast Swing

Cory was in Philadelphia attending a training class for his new job, so I decided to fly out and meet him for the weekend. We'd been to Philly once before - on a road trip up the East Coast. As road trips tend to go though, we only stayed for a day and night and were off again. Since Philly isn't on my radar of hot-spot vacation cities, I figured I had better take this opportunity to get to know it a little better.

Cory's #1 "to-do" item was to see the Rocky statue and run up the "Rocky Steps" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Yo, Adrian!

Da  da-da-da  da-da-da  da-da-da...DA - DA - DAAAA...DA - DA - DAAAAA!

We thought it would be poor form to only go to the Museum of Art for Rocky, so we went inside in an attempt to see the visiting Van Gogh exhibit as well. When we saw it was $17 each (or something along those lines) to get in, we decided we weren't that cultured after all.

We went to a Phillies game instead.

Phillies vs. Cubs - Phillies lose :(

The next day we decided to wander around town. We started at the Italian Market and made our way south to Pat's - one of the two most famous Philly cheese steak places in town (the other is across the street at Geno's). I was told that all cheese steak places have a man's name.

I was also told that you have to order your steak with Cheez Whiz - Yum!

Cory loves his cheese steak.

I think Cory owes the city $100 - He's too skinny. 

After wolfing down my first-ever cheese steak and not having a plan about where to go next, I thought it would be a good idea to sit at a coffee shop, digest, and decide what to do. We randomly wandered into Rim Cafe, which we soon learned is a coffee shop that makes super-amazing and intense hot chocolate. So much for digesting...

We met the owner, Rene, who was on Sugar High on the Food Network for his Cafe's concoctions. See below...

Rene makes his own blocks of chocolate and has tons of different hot chocolate recipes.

We thought the drinks would be really rich, but ended up perfect. Not too sweet and just what we didn't know we needed after a cheese steak lunch.

We spent the afternoon wandering through the streets. We encountered a YMCA Zumba class that had blocked off a city street to advertise. Adults and kids were dancing in the middle of the street, so we stopped to watch. We walked through Rittenhouse Square and wandered into a church that was having a full on dress-rehearsal choir practice. And we ended up LOVE Park, where there was a live band preforming and, separately, a bride and groom taking wedding photos.

The famous LOVE statue.

Just more proof that a day of wandering around can be more fun and interesting than a day that's fully planned.

That night we went on a ghost tour and back to bed early. We had another historical tour to catch in the morning. Among other things, we saw...

Elfreth's Alley - The oldest continuously inhabited residential street in the US.

Ben Franklin's grave - throw a penny for good luck.

Independence Hall - Cory is re-enacting the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Since our flight was in the late afternoon, we had time to walk part way across the George Washington Bridge, which connects Pennsylvania to New Jersey. Our shuttle driver told us we could find one of the best views of Philly from the bridge. He was right.

Downtown Philly

We spent a lot of our weekend walking around. Luckily, we had a notable landmark to indicate where we needed to turn to get back to our Comfort Inn (not recommended).

Thanks Mr. Bar Stool, Elvis, and Charlie Chaplin for pointing us in the right direction!