An Afternoon in the City of Brotherly Love

Lauren and I spent last Sunday in Philadelphia because I had to fly out of Philadelphia early Monday morning to head back to Dallas. We drove from Reading to Philadelphia. We missed a couple of exits but eventually made it there. After finding our hotel, we dropped off our stuff and explored the city a little bit. Thanks to Red's employee discount, we were able to stay at a super nice Hyatt right on the Delaware River only a few blocks from the Historic District.

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Here's a grab of our hotel in some good lighting on our way back in after exploring.

As we set out to explore some of the city, we noticed there were many ships outside our hotel. One of them looked like this:

We passed some interesting things on our way to the Historic district.

Once we got to the Historic district, we stopped in to check out the Liberty Bell.

I actually own the same shirt.

Who's at the Liberty Bell and has two thumbs? This girl...

After the Liberty Bell, we crossed the street to check out Independence Hall. The line was long, so we figured since we had only an afternoon in Philly we didn't want to spend a good bit of it waiting in line. But we did get some shots from outside Independence Hall to mark our proximity to it.

This is a shot from the other side that I got a little bit later.

After Independence Hall, we walked across the street to Washington Square (one of the original parks designed by William Penn). It was a beautiful day, so people were out in mass.

It was now about 5 PM, so we set out to find an early dinner - namely a Philly Cheesesteak. We walked back towards Independence Hall where we had seen a street vendor. As we get there, he tells us that he only has drinks left. When we ask him, where we could find a cheesesteak, he tells us that everywhere is closed. Lauren and I don't believe him. We walked around quite a while, and apparently most of Philadelphia shuts down at 5. It was so weird (or at least we thought so). These are a couple of shots just from walking around looking for a place to eat.

Finally, we found a pub. They had cheesesteaks on the menu. They were good, but somehow I think they lacked the authenticity of the street vendor. But we had some tasty beer to make up for it.

After our delicious meal, we headed back to the hotel. It was a little early, but I had to be at the airport at 7, and Lauren had to make the hour and a half drive back to Reading before work the next morning.

Once we got back to the hotel, we went down to the fancy dancy restaurant and had some delicious cheesecake. After we got back up to the room, we had some fun with the night skyline.

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And there it is, the extensive recap of our afternoon in Philly.

I'll put some more photos up on Flickr, but I figured this was wayyy too much for a single post already.