Philadelphia PA

So, I know this post is VERY pic heavy and long, I'm sorry, but please bare with me. There was so much to see and do while we were in Philly that I couldn't really decide what photos not to post. No, I did not post them all; as we took almost a thousand pictures on the 4 days we were there, so count yourself as lucky. HA-HA Here are some of the highlights...
Here we are the evening before we left. It was Gregg's birthday that Thursday, so I thought we'd have Payton take a photo of us together in the backyard when Gregg took a break from pushing her on the swing.

Here is Gregg in our room pretending he's Rocky. We had a marvelous view, City Hall was right outside our window. Here's the view from our window at night. You'd never guess that guys that collect Intel for a living would have such good cameras. HA Somehow I never even thought about it. But the camera he brought blew me away. I'm going to really have to get one for myself. *hint hint* how about Christmas? *hint hint* If I can wait that long.
Sunday we ate Philly cheese steaks. We drove into a real eclectic part of town to get them too. Pat's (to the right) and Geno's (center shot) are the two famous sandwich places in town. I got into Geno's line and Gregg into Pat's then we shared the sandwiches. I believe Pat's was better but Gregg was torn. Geno's for the cheese and Pat's for the meat. We toured Eastern State Penitentiary. This shot is from the outside. We happened upon it by mistake and was interested because it looked like a castle. Had it not, I bet we wouldn't have even noticed it. Oh, and there were also a bunch of movie set trucks outside so we needed to see what all the hubbub was about.

We have a few dozen random photos from inside the prison. It was a very neat place, there was an audio tour, that's why Gregg has on the headphones. They were filming scenes from Transformers 2 in Philly while we were there in quite a few different places, including Eastern State and City Hall.
This was Al Capone's cell. His was nicer and also larger than the other random cells. Oh, and lets not forget about the plush furniture that was in there. Goes to show you that even behind bars, money can make life easier.

Here's the outside of the hotel from the street. The people were very nice here.

This was the bar area. The inside of this hotel was magnificent.
That circular thing to the left is where they store their wine bottles. To the right is the restaurant, 10 Arts. We had breakfast there every morning (which was amazing) and dinner there one evening (which was less than impressive). Here we are, in our room before dinner on our anniversary.
Here are the lounge area and check in. We sat at that couch mid photo and had a few drinks Friday night. It was fun to just sit and watch people. The Angels (baseball team) were staying at the same hotel so there was a lot to watch.
Gregg and I Monday morning before we headed home posing under the Love statue. I was sad to leave, I wanted to stay a few more days. I hadn't quite started to miss home yet.
Here I am in front of Edgar Allen Poe's home in Philly. He lived there for just a couple years, but wrote a few famous works then, including The Raven. We toured his home which was very neat and all original. He is my favorite author, I began reading his work as just a child, around the age of 7. There is a Poe museum in Richmond I am going to have to get to one day.

Random shot outside of Washington Square. This area was beautiful, but other than downtown and the historical areas, Philadelphia was a trashy, dirty city. We were amazed at just how dirty it was and that people seemed OK with it this way. I have never seen an American city this dirty. This was the original courthouse. This shot doesn't show how neat this place was. It was very small so we couldn't get a wider shot. To the left of this photo was the jury box and on each side of the building was a fireplace.
Here's the liberty bell. You should have seen the line to get into this building.

Downtown, just outside of our building there were a bunch of random game pieces. Sorry, Dominoes, Chess, Bingo & Monopoly just to name a few. We took some silly photos with a few of them. Gregg says that this photo reminds him of a Mentos commercial, I'm not sure why. Here's Gregg on the Monopoly hat. You can also see a chess piece and some bingo buttons in the background on the right side of the photo.
Here is the other side of city hall, our hotel building is on the right side of this shot. We toured City Hall and read the history of the building. The architecture reminded me a lot of Paris. At the top of the tower was a viewing platform that went all the way around. We got some really great shots of the city from here. At the top of this building is a statue of William Penn, for whom Pennsylvania is named after.
After a long day of walking (Saturday) Gregg and I saw this fountain that people were dipping their feet into to cool off. We thought it was a great idea and it really did the trick. Saturday we went to the Rodin museum. Here is the thinking man outside. There were quite a few sculptures on display here. I loved how he portrayed hands and feet in stone and bronze, those were the most impressive to me. Gregg purchased me a recreation of "The Kiss" which is on display in Paris to keep in our home.
Here's Gregg and Rocky, outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

What a wonderful trip my sweet husband planned for us to enjoy together. There was so much more that we did while there, but the photos aren't very interesting and I know none of you are foodies, so I'll skip the restaurant reviews and market tours. It was a really great trip and I enjoyed every minute of it.