Hi, friends! I’m back today with a recap of our long weekend in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania! As you may know, I am living and working in Columbia, Maryland this summer. I found a fantastic family to live with during this time through Airbnb, but one of the catches was that Memorial Day weekend had already been booked by another family. Meaning, I would need to make arrangements to stay elsewhere that weekend. Luckily for me, I love any excuse to travel and explore somewhere new, so Allen flew in for the long weekend and we headed into Philadelphia to explore all the sights, sounds, and history there! The drive to Philadelphia is only a couple hours from Columbia, so it turned out to be a fun little road trip. We made a half-day pit stop in Annapolis, Maryland (that you can read about here) and arrived in Philadelphia late in the evening.
We stayed at the Sheraton hotel in downtown Philadelphia, which was pretty convenient for everything we wanted to see (we did have to walk everywhere, but we were ok with that!). Since we got in pretty late on the first night, we found a little Pub nearby that stayed open late and grabbed a bite to eat. Afterwards we headed back to the hotel to get a good night’s rest before our first official day of exploring Philadelphia.
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Day 1
I have to admit, Philadelphia is not what I expected it to be. After learning all about its vital role in history books and movies, I assumed it would be a small, quaint town with lots of history and colonial-style buildings (something like colonial Williamsburg, or even Annapolis!). But what we found instead was a bustling metropolis with high-rises and big business. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of historic sights to visit and learn about, but many of them are either re-built (not original) or not well marked. And there is a whole downtown, high-rise area that surrounds the whole of the tiny historic area. Nothing wrong with this set up, it just wasn’t what either of us expected to find when we arrived! 🙂 The self-guided tour is more a search for gems than a well-organized activity. I found this self-guided tour after we returned, and wished I would have found it sooner!
All this said, Philadelphia has some pretty incredible and beautiful cityscape views! And we couldn’t have had a more perfect first day of weather to explore.
Perhaps unsurprisingly to anyone who has been following our travels for very long, we decided to spend our first morning in town at the Reading Terminal Market. Allen and I love going to public markets, searching for exotic fruits, and eating our way through all the local vendors there.
In fact, Allen had his entire day made when he finally found golden berries! After our trip to the Pacific Northwest two springs ago when we first discovered them, Allen has been on the hunt for them. If you haven’t tried them before, they are a sweet and tangy orange berry with lots of little micro seeds inside them (kind of like a tomato). And they are incredibly delicious! If you ever have the chance to try them, do it!
I was super tempted by this olive bar…I mean, have you ever seen giant red olives like that before?! I’m regretting not trying any now.
For breakfast/lunch, we decided to split a Brisket sandwich (with Russian dressing and cole slaw…yummm!) from Hershel’s East Side Deli and a cup of mac-and-cheese from Hunger Burger. Both were incredibly yummy and more than enough to split for two!
After getting our fill of food for the morning, we headed out to find all the historical gems of Philly.
We stopped inside the Visitor’s Center first to grab a map of all the spots we wanted to visit and to talk with National Park rangers about where to start first. Nearly everything to see around Philly is self-guided so you get to set your own schedule. However, the one thing you will need to reserve is a free ticket for is viewing the inside of Independence Hall. Allen and I didn’t do this and instead opted to wait in line after 5pm one night to see it, but it’s a lot of time to waste in line (after a long day of walking around the city already). So if we were to do it again, I would suggest getting viewing tickets early so that you don’t have to waste an evening waiting in line (in the rain, like us). But if you don’t have the chance to get a ticket, fear not! You can still see Independence Hall without a ticket in the summer, you’ll just need to wait in line like we did. Everything works out! You can check the hours and free tickets here.
Also, lines for the Liberty Bell can get pretty long too. And since we didn’t get up particularly early on our first morning, we decided to save the Liberty Bell for the next morning.
At any rate, we started our historic walking tour of Philly at Benjamin Franklin’s printing office, which both of us agreed was the coolest thing we saw all day. So definitely don’t miss this one!
Allen getting excited over finding a historic privy pit. Haha! Oh boy…
Once inside the printing office, there are hourly demonstrations about how the printing press works, as well as discussion about Ben Franklin’s early life as a printer (before he was involved in building our nation’s government). I always love hearing about the lives of prominent people before they were well-known.
After looking around the inside of the printing office, we headed back outside to decide our next destination. Word to the wise, Philadelphia is HOT. Both of us felt like we were melting any time we would step outside. We took a 15 minute break on the bench in the photo below to get some reprieve from the humidity/sweat generated by walking around.
Next stop was Carpenter’s Hall, where the first Continental Congress met to discuss England’s grievances against the thirteen original colonies. The building itself was built by the oldest carpenter’s guild still in existence, and most of the interior is dedicated to this cause. It was an interesting and informative place to visit! I especially loved flipping through the photographs of guild members to the left of the door right when you walk in, dating back over a hundred years! It was so empowering to “meet” the incredible women carpenters and architects among the predominantly male membership through this record.
After walking through Carpenter’s Hall, we walked over towards the Second Bank of the United States. En route we found beautiful architecture to enjoy along the way.
The Second Bank of the United States is really gorgeous. The building itself was completed in 1824 and was modeled after the Parthenon in Greece. To get a sense of scale of the building, I ran up the steps for a quick picture. Can you see me in the picture below? The bank building was in operation until 1832, but now houses an amazing collection of 18th and 19th century portraits that I would highly recommend visiting!
After looking through all the beautiful portraits in the Second Bank, we headed back outside into the heat in search of ice cream. Luckily for us, there was a Rita’s Italian Ice within walking distance. Rita’s was introduced to me on my last summer work tour in Virginia by one of my best friends who grew up on the East Coast. It’s amazing and definitely was worth the walk.
If you ever end up trying Rita’s, get the gelati–Italian ice sandwiched between the creamiest custard soft serve you will ever have! Needless to say, I converted Allen on this first trip of his to Rita’s! 😛
Once we got our ice cream, we decided to walk back towards the more historic part of town while eating it. We stopped back by Independence Hall (below) but decided not to wait for the evening (un-ticketed) viewing. Walking around a city in the heat really takes it out of you and we were ready for some real food for the night. Does anyone else tend to skip lunch while they’re on vacation?
Also, be cognoscente of building plaques around the city. You never know what kind of historical gems you might stumble upon on your walk around town. Just because a building might be closed, doesn’t mean you can’t learn something about its significance from the outside!
For dinner, we got an Uber out to the original Philly cheesesteak spot (Pat’s King of Steaks) and it was amazing!!! If you want to try this place out, make sure you bring cash as it is cash only! Also, because it is the original, expect to wait in line for your order. (As with anything worth having in life, right?) But know it will be worth the wait! 🙂
If you’ve never ordered an authentic Philly cheesesteak before, here is how you order one. First you specify if you want the sandwich with or without onion. Next you specify what type of cheese you want–plain, cheese whiz, provolone, american. And finally, if you want mushrooms, peppers, or marinara (aka pizzasteak), then you can specify that in the type of steak. For instance, I always ordered mine with onions, peppers, and cheese whiz. So my order would be a peppersteak with and whiz. These rules apply for just about any authentic Philly cheesesteak place you go in the area. So it’s a good system to know if you plan to order lots of cheesesteaks like we did! 😛
Yummm! So good! Wishing I had one of these for lunch right about now…
After dinner, we got an Uber home and decided to watch one of my all-time favorite movies–National Treasure! I love watching National Treasure just about any day of the year, but it was especially fitting to watch while we were in Philadelphia because much of the movie takes place there. And really, is there any better way to learn about history than directly from Nick Cage?! It was so so neat to see places we had just visited that day and to get more ideas of places we wanted to visit the next!
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Day 2
Day 2 in Philadelphia was a little more moody and foggy than the first, but Allen and I both love cool fall-like mornings. So we were in our element despite the soft drizzle. Nothing that a lightweight rain jacket can’t appease!
Don’t you just love how the buildings seem to disappear into the clouds in the photo below? So dreamy.
As a surprise to no one, Allen and I went back to the public market for breakfast/lunch. While I was considering getting another sandwich from Hershel’s Deli, we decided to branch out and try something new.
I started by getting an iced vanilla latte from Old City Coffee. Would highly recommend this place! And next, we each decided to try a different Asian dish from separate spots in the market. (P.S. – A huge plus of getting food at the market is that everyone can get exactly what they want!). Allen got the Peking duck with fried rice and I got veggie fried rice with an egg roll. It was a non-traditional albeit delicious first meal of the day!
They even had a live band playing in the center of the market that was so fun to stop at and listen to.
After walking around the market some more, we decided we needed to try the corn dogs and watermelon lemonade from Fox & Son Fancy Corndogs. Best decision ever! I was craving those things for the rest of our trip! They make fancier versions, but sometimes the OG plain style is the best. No need to change something that already works!
After finishing up at the market, we walked over to the Liberty Bell. The line was a little long, but it moved reasonably quickly. And it was nice to still have my iced coffee to sip on while we waited. 😀
Best piece of advice I can give you while you’re visiting the Liberty Bell is to ask the National Park Ranger on duty any and all questions you have! The lady we talked to was a wealth of knowledge and that’s how we found out the bell was actually cut up and re-cast on several different occasions! Crazy!
Next, we walked over to Independence Hall to see if they (miraculously) had any reserved tickets still available for the guided tour. Unfortunately they didn’t, so we decided to just come back and wait in line for the open (unreserved) showings starting later that evening. While we were in the area, we were lucky enough to make the next guided tour of Congress Hall, right next door, that first-come-first-serve and FREE.
Interestingly enough, Congress Hall was constructed to be the Philadelphia County Court House but ended up serving as the meeting place of the U.S. Congress for 10 years (1790-1800) while Philadelphia served as the nation’s capitol during the construction of Washington, D.C. So cool to think of all the significant people and legislation that happened in there!
The House of Representatives met on the main floor (first picture below), while the Senate met upstairs (second picture below).
And below is a picture of another room outside the main hall where important discussions most surely took place.
Next, we stopped into an adjacent building where there were original copies of several important documents, like the Declaration of Independence. One thing we learned during this trip is that many of the significant documents we hold so dear to our nation’s founding were not single documents. Instead, there exist several subtle variations depending on who printed the document and what congressmen signed it (they weren’t always signed by people at the same time and it usually wasn’t even the same physical copy!).
Philadelphia LOVES Ben Franklin, and you can be sure to find little memorials to him all over the city!
Next up was The Franklin Institute, a science museum in the city! We didn’t spend a ton of time here (nor did we end up purchasing tickets to go inside), but it looked like a fun place to spend a rainy day.
Do you remember this scene in National Treasure?! Reilly paying the little kid to go find coded letters in the Silence Do Good Letters that were housed in the Franklin Institute (in the movie only). Allen even got his dollar bill out for the photo! Haha! He’s so funny.
While we didn’t purchase tickets for the museum, we did walk inside to see the beautiful statue of Ben Franklin (who odly looks exactly like my PhD advisor!). Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. 😛 Anyways…
Next, we walked across town to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, known as the location of the “Rocky Steps” from the Rocky Balboa movies.
Out front there is an incredible fountain with all kinds of wildlife statues. I, of course, couldn’t help myself around the moose!
The Rocky statue is also located to one side of the museum, but we didn’t wait in line to get a picture of it. We were more interested in the spectacular views of the city from the top of the steps!
Allen did the classic running up the steps (twice!) and on the second time I was filming him from the top, he lost his footing on the last step and stumbled a bit. It was equally scary and hilarious! Not the idyllic Rocky ending with arms raised in the air in celebration we saw in the movie! But still very Allen. 😛
We also thought about going inside the Art Museum, but didn’t think we had enough time remaining to justify it. We wanted to get back to Independence Hall for the unreserved viewings starting at 5pm (recommend getting there at 4:15 pm). Had it not been the middle of the afternoon (or if we had another full day to devote to it), we would have gone in!
After waiting in line to see Independence Hall (about an hour), we finally got in! It was a really neat experience to be in the same room our forefathers were in when they debated and signed both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. As you can see, I was quite smitten to be there!
Afterwards, we walked to a different part of town to have dinner at Jim’s Steaks, another fantastic place to get a Philly cheesesteak! As you can see, expect lines at any of the amazing cheesesteak places! But so #worthit.
You get to watch the magic happen while you wait in line, which makes you want it even more by the time you get to the front. Yummm! Just look at those beautiful Philly cheesesteaks!
And the views from the second floor eating area are pretty too!
Quite the perfect ending to a second day in Philadelphia! When in doubt, always end the day with a Philly cheesesteak.
Day 3
Our third and final day began with a hunt for breakfast. We really wanted to go back to the public market to try an authentic Pennsylvania Dutch breakfast, but everything was closed on Memorial Day! So sad! Instead we found this amazing bagel place in the city that makes the BEST bagel sandwiches (which I am now obsessed with!).
There’s not really a place to eat inside the store, so we took our sandwiches to a nearby Starbucks. I got a coffee to enjoy with breakfast and we ate our sandwiches there.
And then we spent the rest of the morning taking one final walk around the downtown area (coffee in hand, of course!).
Allen’s flight left out of the BWI airport later that evening, so we started the drive back towards the Columbia area. We took the longer, more scenic route since we had some extra time and found a Rita’s for a mid-afternoon snack.
We then stopped over in the Sandy Point State Park for a leisurely stroll along the beach together.
Love him so, so much! And I miss being away from him constantly. But I’m so thankful we get to see each other a few times this summer while I’m away!
We had such an amazing time exploring Philadelphia, and I can’t wait to see where our next adventure takes us!
What about you? Have you ever visited Philadelphia? What were your favorite spots?
You might also like…Day Trip to Annapolis, MD and Exploring Victoria, BC On Foot.
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1 Comment
Kim D Nichols
August 21, 2018 at 2:28 pmLove that you Love to travel, Love how you Live your life.