on the streets of philadelphia

One of the great things about living on the East Coast is that all the states are smaller - making it easier, and faster, to travel from one state to the next. Our goal is to try and visit all of the major cities, so we decided to take advantage of the long weekend and hop on a bus to Philly.

The first thing we noticed when we arrived in Philadelphia is that it doesn't hold a candle to NYC. I expected it to be much larger then it was. There were only a few sky scrapers and everything was within walking distance. I guess I had imagined it being more like Boston but it was very small. I may be stretching it, but I would say that their downtown wasn't much bigger then SLC. Their buildings were a lot taller but there weren't that many more than Salt Lake. Okay, I may be exaggerating a little, and they do have several monuments and museums that Salt Lake doesn't have, but I just wanted to prove to you that it wasn't that big.

First on our list of things to do was jump on the double-decker tour bus and check out the city. For those of you who don't know - tour buses are our favorite. We've been on the NY bus 3 times and the Philly bus didn't disappoint. We learned all about the history of the city, saw the Rocky steps, Independence Hall, Reading Terminal Market and Betsey Ross' house, but our two favorites were Elfreth's Alley and the Eastern State Penitentiary.



Betsey's House



Elfreth's Alley


Jason - trying his hand at photography


The ESP was the first Penitentiary, built in the 1800's by the Quakers to help prisoners become "penitent" (hence the name penitentiary). They believed that every person had some good in them so they locked prisoners up in complete isolation in hopes that they would find the good within. Unfortunately their plan failed and most of the prisoners went crazy. Now you can only imagine the crazy things that happened here and, of course, we loved hearing about it. It was so creepy looking in their tiny stalls and imagining someone being locked in one for 23 hours a day with only a bible and no contact with anyone. Throughout the prison they have statues of white cats in honor of the cats that lived in the prison after it was closed in 1971. The cats alone freaked me out. After our audio tour and a guided tour about the riots that took place in the prison, we learned there is a haunted house in the prison for Halloween. We also LOVE haunted houses and haven't been able to find a good one out here. It looks like we will be returning to Philadelphia in October so we can freak ourselves out.

The creepy cats inside ESP


The little doors are entrances to the cells


Al Capone's cell


After our creepy experience at the prison we couldn't get enough of the scary stuff and decided to go on a candlight ghost tour of Philadelphia. We learned that a lot of our founding fathers still come back to haunt this great city and that Benjamin Franklin was a ladies man even after he died. Our tour was kind of boring, so after walking around with a broken flip-flop and our tour guide making a couple of rude Mormon jokes, we decided we had enough and ditched the end of the tour.

The rest of our trip was great. We relaxed, ate Philly cheese steaks, walked around the city, ate more cheese steaks, brushed up on our history and ate a few more Philly cheese steaks. I think Jason's mission on this trip was to find the best cheese steak in town, and after trying out a lot of places, he concluded that Jim's was the best. I don't think I have ever eaten so much of one food in a weekend, but I do have to say that the cheese steaks in Philly are AMAZING!!



We were able to catch two different firework shows in town and had a wonderful time celebrating the 4th of July in the city of brotherly love. One common phrase used on our tour was when the tour guide would describe a building or monument they would always say it was the 2nd largest of its kind next to NY or that it was the most famous behind NYC!! We quickly discovered (and laughed each time it was said) that no matter how hard they try, Philadelphia will always be the second best - and that is why we LOVE NYC!!



* This song was in my head the entire trip.