Good morning loves!
Today I'm sharing part one of our long weekend trip to Philadelphia.
Back in the spring Tim purchased tickets for us to go to the Patriots- Eagles game in Philadelphia, so we decided to make a long weekend out of it. We rented an AirBnB right in Philly and were able to fit a lot of things into the weekend.
Here we are on our first morning in Philly, we were excited to get out into the city and experience it! Tim had been to Philadelphia before but I had never been and was so thrilled to be there.
Look how pretty the streets of Philly are! It's such a gorgeous city.
A free attraction in Philly is the Liberty Bell and right outside of it is the President's House which was the house presidents lived in before the White House was built. It was interesting to see the foundation of the original house and think about Philadelphia being the nations capitol. This is an open air exhibit so it was a bit chilly!
The Liberty Bell was cool to see but it was much smaller than I thought it would be.
Although the Liberty Bell was not quite as impressive as I thought it would be, I highly recommend checking it out because there is a museum inside with information on the bell and it's certainly worth a peek since it's a historical item. Also, the museum and bell are free to enter so why not just stop by?!
We walked through the small display in Independence Visitors Center which was interesting. You can see Tim above demonstrating how they stamped newspapers back in the day. I think he commented something like " Screw that. That's a lot of work."
Just getting ready to sign the Declaration of Independence. I love a cheesy photo op.
Tim signing with an invisible pen.
I'm grateful that he doesn't mind my love of taking pictures. He is great at going along with it.
Just taking a picture with Benjamin Franklin. He was very prominent in Philadelphia!
We also saw his final resting spot.
On our way to our next destination we stopped at this Christmas decor in the Fashion District.
We didn't do much shopping in Philly. The only shopping we really did was gifts for other people and in the Eagles store (I'm looking at you Tim!) but we did briefly step inside this mall.
I really wanted to go in Reading Terminal Market and it was SUPER overwhelming but definitely worth it. There are tons of vendors and so many different kinds of food to eat. I was very overwhelmed but found it to be a really cool experience.
This was the florist inside and how gorgeous are all of these flowers?
Sorry for the blurry pictures but the lighting was awful in the seating area. Tim had a sandwich from one of the vendors.
I had a pretzel filled with a hotdog and cheese. It was delicious.
I felt like I was constantly taking pictures of things on the street. Like this display outside one of the hotels. There's just so much to look at in the city!
Our big activity in the afternoon was the Eastern State Penitentiary. This was the first penitentiary in the world and was super creepy! Most of it is completely run down but it still gives you a good idea of what it was like to be in the prison. Our Uber driver joked with us that he drops a lot of people off there but never picks them up. (We did get picked up, but by a different Uber driver)
I took a ton of pictures because it is a really photogenic place. I did feel rather uneasy the entire time I was inside and it's supposedly haunted. We didn't see any proof of that while we were there, but I'm not saying that it isn't! Unfortunately we somehow missed the headphones for the audio tour so I think we missed out on quite a bit of information but there were plenty of signs with information throughout the prison.
It was so strange to read about the practices of the prison, including a dog that was sentenced to prison! He was sentenced for killing a cat and actually had a prisoners number and lived at the prison. It made Tim and I miss Sophie terribly.
Most of the cells we peeked inside were dismal places. They didn't look like a nice place to be, as prison cells shouldn't be a place you want to be after all. There was one exception...
Al Capone's cell! This cell was recreated to look like it did when he was there, which was beautifully decorated. It was clear he lived a life of luxury even when in prison.
It was a very unique experience and not expensive at all! I would recommend this as a stop on your tour of Philly if you want a bit of history that isn't along the same timeline as the Declaration of Independence.
After walking around there for awhile we decided to head over to Iron Hill Brewery for some lunch!
Tim was thrilled to get the "Philly special" beer, he was finally able to be with "his people" by being in Philadelphia. It must be hard for him in New England with no one super excited about the Eagles :)
We had an appetizer of pretzels with beer cheese. I am absolutely loving beer cheese lately. Anytime we head to a brewery that has it I get super excited.
Chicken pot pie for me and Tim had a plate of nachos. We are obviously not the healthiest eaters but we really enjoy food!
We had to walk off all the unhealthy food we had just eaten. We had seen a couple of areas that we wanted to walk through while we were in an Uber so we headed back that direction.
This was such a cute little Christmas garden!
I was bummed that we missed the Christmas markets by only a week or two but it was nice to see some of the Christmas decor already out in the city!
Another cool area in the city was all these game pieces! There were a ton of skateboarders using the area but we really thought it was cool to point out monopoly pieces.
I really loved getting our picture taken in Love Park! There was a bit of a line, but it ended up being a good thing since we were able to ask someone to take our picture!
We ended up heading back to our AirBnB to charge our phones and recharge ourselves a little before heading back out to One Liberty Observation Deck.
Let me just give you a little bit of advice about this stop. I think it would've been much better if we went at sunset. During the day would've also been nice because you could've seen the different buildings and figured out what everything was. Sunset would've been unbelievably gorgeous and if I could go back, I would've insisted we went then.
That being said, Philly really is gorgeous at night. We just couldn't tell what everything was!
It was hard to get pictures without a reflection of the inside, but the ones I got I think came out gorgeous!
It was pretty cool, but we honestly didn't spend that much time there. We walked around a couple of times looking out all the windows, taking some pictures and then we headed back down.
Not before Tim found an Eagles player to take a picture with though.
Just a Christmas tree, it was so nice to see all the Christmas decor around the city.
For dinner we ended up going to (on EVERYONES recommendation) Jim's Cheesesteaks. We were told not to go to Geno's or Pat's because they are a tourist trap and aren't great sandwiches. Everyone kept saying that Jim's was the best so that's where we went! The line wrapped around the building but it was definitely an experience. I am not a fan of cheesesteaks however I tried one just to get the full experience. I thought it was okay, not the best thing I've ever eaten and not the worst, Tim seemed to enjoy his! It's worth trying because it's the food of Philly just to get the experience!
That's all for day 1! I'll be back in a couple of days with day 2 in Philly!
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