Philadelphia

Living in Boston and being so close to so many different places we've always wanted to see, it's sometimes hard to decide where to go first. I got an email from Hotels.com saying they had some secret prices available for me so we decided to take a little road trip for Valentine's Day! Now to decide where we wanted to go... Everyone says we need to see New York again since our day trip for Broadway didn't really count apparently. But, we honestly wanted to see Philadelphia more, call us crazy. We just weren't that impressed with New York when we were there. We will give it another shot but just not so soon after our first trip. So, thanks to Hotels.com we got a great price for the Courtyard Marriott in Philly. After considering the costs of gas, tolls and parking in Philly, I decided to look at the costs of flying. It was a little bit more expensive, but why not?! So we bought plane tickets and we were ready to go! Fast forward to the day before we were supposed to snow and Boston got hit with a blizzard. So our flight got cancelled. We got a refund and decided to drive down Friday morning.

Friday morning we had a little bit of a later start than we wanted. By the time we left the apartment and got our car cleared off (there was about a foot of snow on the roof of the car, no joke), we were about an hour behind schedule. No worries though because we love travelling and we love road trips so we were in good spirits. And fortunately, Massachusetts rocks at clearing and salting roads so it was smooth sailing! Until we hit Connecticut. They are not so good at clearing their roads so it was much slower driving through Connecticut. And then we ended up sitting in traffic for about 40 minutes because the roads were bad and there were so many people on the road. Thanks for nothing CT! Even though you are beautiful. Ok it was really beautiful. The skies were completely clear and brilliantly blue, the snow covered forests in Connecticut and Massachusetts just glistened. We just turned on Harry Potter and enjoyed the mastery of Jim Dale and tried to make the best of being stuck in traffic. We finally got moving and made it into New York. We were enjoying the scenery and enjoyed driving over the George Washington Bridge. I wish pictures from the car could do justice to driving over the bridge. It's amazing to look out and see Manhattan and the water. And then we came into New Jersey. I'm sure New Jersey has lots to offer, but compared to the winter wonderland of New England, it just did not offer a very pretty picture. Before we knew it, we were on the Ben Franklin Bridge crossing over into Philly!

It was so cool seeing the new Philadelphia Temple when we first got into the city!

Our hotel was right in downtown so it was easy to get to. We parked just around the corner in the parking lot about the Reading Terminal Market. That was definitely on my list of must sees in Philly. It's a huge market filled with restaurants, bakeries, produce stands, butchers, etc. We parked and headed into the market to get something to eat. First thing we had to get was a cheese steak of course. We found this placed called Down Home Diner that had cheese steaks and fries for like $9, can't beat that! It was delicious! Just steak, tons of melted Provolone and sauteed onions, yum!

We walked around the market for a bit drinking it all in. It was crazy busy but in the best way. They had lots of Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch goods for sale throughout the market. Greg got a black and white cookie at one of the bakeries and then we headed over to our hotel to check in. The hotel was awesome! It's been in Philly since 1926 and all of the brass work in the lobby was original!

Original mailbox

We got up to our room and put some layers on because it was COLD. Probably one of my favourite things about this trip was that we just packed in our new backpacks that we bought for our upcoming trip to Paris. It was so easy to pack and carry around with us, they were awesome. After dressing warm, we went out to explore. First thing up was to find the Love sign. The park where it normally is is under construction so it took a while to figure that out, but we found it!

We spent some time checking out City Hall. It was right outside our hotel and it was IMPRESSIVE. It was HUGE. And the detail on the building was insane. We walked all around it, through the middle and took a ton of pictures.

We loved walking around. There were so many interesting buildings and there were murals on buildings all over the city. We saw a Masonic temple, lots of churches, and we walked over and checked out the Temple!

It's hard to tell from this picture, but this street in Philly had flags
from countries all over the world lining the street

Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul
We really wanted to go in, but it was closed
Don't worry! We got to see it Saturday!

Masonic Temple

Mormon Temple!

After walking around for a couple of hours, we were ready for dinner! Earlier we had walked by an old school looking Italian restaurant and their menu looked pretty good so that's where we headed. They had a red checked table cloths, fresh hot Ciabatta bread, and the dark wood and dim lighting. I loved it! It was called Maggiano's and turns out it's a chain restaurant! And there's one in Boston which made me happy because it was delicious! We had a couple pieces of Bruschetta and then shared a big bowl of hand rolled pasta. SO GOOD! And then we split NUTELLA CHEESECAKE for dessert. Oh man that was insanely delicious. So chocolatey and creamy... Ah I can't say enough good things about it. Since it was pretty late dinner and we were wiped from walking all afternoon, we just went back to the hotel and went to bed.

Saturday we got up and after checking out of the hotel we headed to Reading Terminal Market for breakfast. We got crepes at a little crepe stand. I had a peach and strawberry one with caramel sauce that was so good! Greg was a little healthier and got a bacon and egg crepe and that was also really good. Apparently we're really ready for our Paris trip because after the crepes we went and got croissants and they were sooo good! We stopped and got some fruit and nuts to snack on through the day and then we headed to Independence Hall. We went in to where we thought the liberty bell was but then Greg saw a sign that said it was some other type of bell so we left that and went and stood in line to see Independence Hall. We waited in line for about 15 minutes and then got to go in. It's a pretty small building, but it was so worth the wait! I felt very patriotic! Our tour guide was awesome too. After seeing Independence Hall we went to go see the Liberty Bell because we realized we were in the right place before. But at this point, the line was super long. So we sat in the park there and at some snacks.

The Court Room

Where the Declaration was signed

The Declaration!

From here we headed to Old City to see Elfreth's Alley, the oldest residential street in America that is still around today. It was so cute! People still live in these houses today but they look exactly like they did in the 1700's. On the way there we passed Christ Church and stepped in to look around for a moment. It's been around since the 1600's! It actually looks very similar to Old North Church in Boston. After seeing the church and the alley we walked down to the pier. The water was pretty gross looking, but it was pretty cool to stand in Philadelphia and look at New Jersey on the other side.

We sat on the pier for a while before walking anymore because we had walked a ton! Fortunately the weather was pretty nice. Friday was super cold, but Saturday it was a lot nicer. We walked back to downtown Philly and went to see if the Cathedral we saw Friday night was open. And it was! The cathedral was amazing! I took so many pictures but the pictures don't even come close to doing justice to the cathedral. This is a must see in Philly.

After just under 30,000 steps in 25 hours (9 of which was spent sleeping or not wearing my FitBit), we were ready to sit in the car for 5 hours to get home. I love that we are so close to so many different places we've wanted to see. This was such an incredible experience. We definitely learned some things along the way. Like if you're going to be exploring the east coast and you have long hair, you better wear your hair up because it is always windy on the coast. I've learned this in Boston and it applies in Philly too. Having a backpack to keep snacks, water, etc. in instead of a purse is way better. Being able to balance the weight between two shoulders instead of just one was great! When you're going to be walking this much, make sure you take time to sit often. We maybe would have walked to the Rocky steps or seen the library if we'd been up for it, but being just go, go, go makes it really hard to want to walk anymore. Now that we're 3 weeks away from our Paris trip, I'm really glad we were able to explore another city in the same way we'll be seeing Paris. As amazing as this trip was, I think there will be some things we will do differently in Paris based on how this trip went.