Northeast Trip: A Day in Philadelphia

If you’ve been following my Northeast Trip posts, you would have caught on to the common “GO GO GO” theme. Our day in Philly was no exception…

For whatever reason, we all thought we could just take “the train” down to the city of Philadelphia. Well that turned out to be much more expensive and not quite as easy as previously thought. After some research, we found the BOLT bus which would pick us up in NYC and take us the whole way to Philadelphia, dropping us off somewhat west of downtown. While the BOLT bus didn’t fully deliver on the free WiFi, it did deliver on an air conditioned and comfortable ride [besides the fact that it was almost 2 hours late picking us up later that night because of a massive accident and weather conditions on the Expressway (aka the freeway to us Californians)].

Anyway, enough about the horrible crazy transportation situation we found ourselves in…

Reading Terminal

After a quick subway ride from the bus stop to the city, we found our way to the Reading Terminal. This alone, is why my husband wants to go back to Philadelphia one day. Of course, hopefully during the Dutch festival again as well!

Reading Terminal is similar to the Chelsea Market we visited in NYC, but its 95% counter service restaurants and a certified farmer’s market. And luckily enough, we managed to go during the 24th Annual Pennsylvania Dutch Festival. I’m not sure that we could ever go back outside of this festival as many of our favorites were part of it, especially Beiler’s Doughnuts where my husband had “the best donut EVER.” The other highlights for us were the sandwiches at Tommy Dinic’s and Hope’s Cookies.

Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell

After stuffing ourselves full, we walked down to see Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Because of our extremely limited time we really didn’t stay anywhere long but just “looked.” And please notice how crazy the weather is… all these photos are shown in chronological order, so note the beautiful blue sky to the massive rain and thunder storm. 🙂

Standing on the steps of the Portrait Gallery, fresh from the rainstorm.

Of course I insisted to stop by the Printing Office to see some old school printmaking… the building used to belong to Benjamin Franklin.

Geno’s vs Pats

And of course, we had to take the bus down to Geno’s and Pat’s to decide for ourselves which of the two offered up the better Philly cheesesteak. We ordered 4 sandwiches, 2 from each restaurant to compare provolone and cheese whiz as well as the sandwich itself.

The winner: Pat’s “wit whiz.”

More Philly Sites and Sights

We had just a few extra minutes (literally fifteen minutes at most) so we ran by the state building as well as the LOVE sign.

And to end all of these Northeast trip posts, my mom did all this touristing with a boot!

Thanks for following along my adventures along the east coast… it finally feels back to normal round here, just in time for more wedding festivities!