Road Trip

I spent this past weekend in Philadelphia - I've never been there before, so I was excited at the chance to visit somewhere new. I arrived at the hotel at about 12:30 Saturday morning. I left right after work Friday and only made two stops on the way in - one to pick up some dinner and once for gas. New York really kills us with taxes on gas. At home I paid $3.58 a gallon to fill up my tank (I always get the middle grade). When I crossed the Pennsylvania border, I paid $3.08. At home I pay an extra $5.00 for every 10 gallons of gas I buy - that really adds up :(

Anyway, I digress... I left for home on Sunday afternoon - I had a lot of fun and managed to see a lot in my day-and-a-half stay:

Independence Hall was a disappointment - I was expecting something big and grand, like something out of National Treasure, but all we got was a half-hour talk by a National Parks volunteer and saw a couple of the rooms where our forefathers sat while coming up with the Declaration of Independence. We didn't even get to see the Declaration of Independence. That was very disappointing.

I have to say that children under the age of seven or eight shouldn't be allowed on these tours. The parents don't watch or discipline them and they are very disruptive. When the kids are so little, they don't get anything out of what's being narrated anyway.

We went by the United States Mint, but being the weekend, they weren't open for tours.


We visited the Mutter Museum which was very interesting. It was neat to see everything in person, but there really wasn't much more than what's been shown on the TV specials about the museum. Picture taking wasn't allowed in the museum. We had dinner at Ralph's - the nation's oldest Italian restaurant owned and operated by the same family. I opted for the cheese ravioli and it was fantastic. Saturday night we went to see a Comedy Sportz show. Randy drove in from Maryland and played with the Philadelphia group.


On Sunday, after another fantastic breakfast from the hotel, we headed out to Eastern State Penitentiary of Ghost Hunters fame ("Run dude - Run!") - that was a lot of fun. I have visited Alcatraz and this tour was just as good, if not better.



What I thought was different was the fact that they incorporated a lot of art exhibits throughout the prison. The one I thought was the most interesting was the Ghost Cats.


We took a stroll through Chinatown...


What is this fine for?


A visit to Benjamin Franklin's grave and lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe rounded out my visit to Philadelphia.


I had fun over the weekend. I loved the mixture of old architecture and new. I loved seeing all the horse and buggies around. We did a *lot* of walking.


But being a city, I could never live here - I like lots of space and privacy at home. Visiting a city = fun. Living in a city = not fun :)

I got home late Sunday night. I was *really* tired at work yesterday :)