Julia and I left for our vacation on Friday, September 25th. It certainly didn’t start out well: due to a light mist falling and runway construction, our flight to Milwaukee was canceled before we even arrived at the airport. Fortunately, we were rebooked onto a direct flight to Philadelphia, but it wouldn’t be leaving for several hours. After spending that time at Ike’s in the airport, and enduring several more delays, we finally boarded for the uneventful flight to Philly.
We arrived in Philly around 9 P.M. their time, and my good friend Mo picked us up at the airport and whisked us off to a tea place in University City for red bean bubble tea (the best flavor) and some calamari. After a long day of traveling, though, we were pretty tired so it was off to bed for us.
The next day, Saturday, was our day in the city of Philadelphia. We took the train into town (awesome mass transit! Even on weekends!) and walked around a bit, first stopping at their famous city hall:
Then off to famous Love Park:
We went off to Chinatown, where they were in the middle of their Autumn Festival. Perfect timing for us!
While we were in Chinatown we decided to stop for lunch. We ended up at a restaurant serving Dim Sum, which neither Julia nor I had had before. There was a wide variety of food, much of which we had never seen before, and a huge amount of it. It wasn’t long before we were both stuffed.
After lunch, we walked around Penn’s Landing and the Old City and saw many of the historical sites around Philadelphia (including a very interesting archaeological dig). Unfortunately, we couldn’t enter most of the sites because they had filled their quota of tickets for the day, but we could see the outside of places like Independence Hall and the First Bank of the United States:
After that, we made a pit stop at a Foot Locker so Julia could buy more comfortable shoes, and then took the subway to University City again to have a drink at a very forgettable bar. Later, we had dinner at a tapas place in Old City just as the rain began to fall, then beat again, took the train back to Lansdale and called it a night.
Sunday we got up and went to a sports bar to watch the Vikings play the 49ers. We watched most of the game, but had to leave before it finished (and thus missed the amazing ending) to take a train into Philadelphia so we could catch the Bolt Bus to New York. The Bolt Bus is awesome: clean, comfortable, and equipped with free wifi (which I used to immediately watch that final pass in the Vikings game). All this for $13 for a trip from Philly to New York. A couple hours later we were deposited right outside Penn Station, ready to check in to our hotel in New York and start exploring.
Stay tuned for more!