Philadelphia (Day 22) 10/1/09

Today, we woke up bright and early at 5:00 to leave Harford. I went to the workout room to get 'all buff and stuff' and then headed out at 6:00 for Philadelphia.

The drive went pretty smoothly.  After some of our Pimsleur Spanish-a-Day CD, we stopped at a Burger King to get some morning chow. We ordered some breakfast sandwiches, nearly fainted after seeing the nutrition facts and ate sullenly. Cheerfully, I pointed out to Dad that *I* had burned calories already today, just to make sure he was extra-jealous .

After hitting the road again, Dad told me to check whereabouts we were in the world. As it turned out, our somewhat looney GPS was trying to take us straight into Midtown NYC during rush hour. Sorry, Nancy (The name we gave our GPS) not happening!
I ended up directing Dad *around* New York by way of the famous Tappan Zee. We passed through Nyack, and headed into New Jersey.

New Jersey and Oregon are the only two states that have 100% full-serve gas stations. This surprised Dad and I, but it's true. New Jersey was also the hardest state of all for us to find a postcard in. When we finally did find a store that sold postcards, we were lectured by the cashier on how evil homeschooling is. Hmmm...

Finally, we arrived into Philadelphia. Dad checked us in to our hotel, where we set our junk down and went to see the sights. After being in NY for so long, Philadelphia seems like a very small city. Dad and I compared it to about the size of Charlotte.
First, we headed down to a food court of sorts, where Dad ordered a Philly Cheese Steak. Being somewhat stupid with lack of sleep, I instead ordered a turkey hoagie to share with Greta. I'm regretting not having the sandwich that makes this city famous.
Our next destination was the Liberty Bell. Apparently, some crazy tourist recently ran up to it and began banging it with a little hammer; now you have to go through a metal detector to enter. We read the exhibit surrounding it, which explains that the bell's original title was something like 'The Pennsylvania State House Bell', until abolitionists in the mid 19th century gave it the title 'The Liberty Bell'.
After this, we headed for Independence Hall, where the Constitution was written and ratified. Our tour guide was rather chubby, balding and had long stringy white hair. We all joked at how lucky we were to get Benjamin Franklin as our tour guide. As he 'guided' us through the building, he gave a few brief facts and then expressed his rather long opinion on the poor restoration of the building. Still, this was pretty good value for a $0 ticket.

We then headed back to the hotel, where we chilled out for the rest of the night and went to bed early.