And I’m Philly’n Good….

Even though Philidelphia is in the same state, I had never actually been there before this trip.  It felt like traveling; not a staycation since I was traveling five hours by car to a new city.  It was traveling. Spoiler alert: I think traveling in your own state is great!  

Map of Philly to help us tourists get around.

This was a very food-centered trip, and if you read any of my Greece blogs, just be warned that I’m doing a Philly cheesesteak showdown (inspired by the Greek salad ‘who wore it best’). 

Navigating our way through fish town.

We stopped at one market where there were a lot of Amish sellers. We tried all (ok, not all but a lot) of the baked goods they were selling…they were AMAZING. The Amish know how to make some pretty great desserts.  Chocolate chip whoopee pie is my all-time favorite. 

So now the moment I’ve been waiting to show you… THE CHEESESTEAK. To be honest, I wasn’t really expecting much from the Philly cheesesteak. Sure, I never doubted they were good, but were they really worth the hype? “Take a hint Sam” was on the case. The verdict is yes. Yes, the philly cheesesteaks are worth all of the hype. Here are the three that made it to the winner’s circle.

In third place, we have:

This delicious number from the famous Pat’s ,topped with some grilled onions. My mouth is watering just looking at it.

In second place, we have this fatter, fuller cheesesteak with some fries on the side.

This was the first cheesesteak of the trip.

And last, but of course not least (because it came in 1st place) is, drumroll please:

You can tell this is #1 just by looking at it.

This little number. Look at the onions, the peppers, the spinach, the cheese is super melty, and there’s a lot of it. You can’t blame me for choosing this as first– it even looks the part.

Nate loved the cheesesteak so much, he bought it flowers.

So, while we did do a lot of eating, Philadelphia does have a lot of history, and history is just as cool as food, right? Right.  And since history is so important, we decided to book tickets at Independence Hall. Easy enough… or so you’d think. When we actually showed up at our reserved time, we still had to wait in line for a bit. There were a lot of lines and a lot of people everywhere, and I was pretty sure (like 85% sure) that the line we were standing in was the correct one. But after standing in line for a while, and only a few minutes before our time slot, we figured out that we were in the wrong line, and we had to sprint to Independence Hall before we lost our reservation. Luckily, we made it there on time, and it became a funny little story of how we got to see Independence Hall instead of a not-so-funny little story about how I made everyone miss out on seeing Independence Hall because I was 85% sure we were standing in the right line, which was 100% the wrong line.

Made it to Independence Hall!

On our Philly history tour extravaganza, we also stopped at the Liberty Bell (of course). The bell was obviously pretty neat, but what was also fascinating was a machine in the giftshop that made a Liberty Bell coin out of your loose change; however, the fun thing about this machine was that it would give you extra money after it dispensed the Liberty Bell coin. Probably a flaw in the system, but definitely beneficial to anyone trying to make an extra two cents. Put in $1 and receive four quarters and two pennies!  Could this go on forever?? We considered standing by that machine all day.

This is a photo of the liberty bell from its better known angle and contains the smile of two people who just make an extra $0.02.

I had a great time walking around the city, soaking up the history, eatin’ some great cheesesteaks, watching improv, creating a scavenger hunt for Dana, daydreaming about how Odessa was spending this April Fools Day, about and enjoying the cherry blossoms blooming all around us. If you do visit: do not leave without getting a cheesesteak, even a vegetarian one. It’s for your own good. 

The new background on my home screen.

Let freedom ring,
‘mi