Life After Work: Philadelphia: Day One

The drive from Atlantic City to Philly is around an hour and it rained on and off most of the way. But, as we arrived in the city, the clouds gave way to blue skies and sunshine. Our hotel, the Windsor Suites, is very centrally located but is on a giant traffic circle. That made for a few tense moments and muttered comments as we tried to follow the gps into the hotel garage. We got it straightened out and were happy to be able to get into our suite early. This has to be the largest hotel room we've had so far. It's truly a suite with a full kitchen, nice bathroom and a great bed. We overlook a little park. Like all major city hotels, you get some road noise, but we don't really mind that.

As soon as we were organized, we started walking and found that we were close to City Hall.

We hadn't eaten breakfast and decided to look for some lunch. Morimoto was on our radar but it turned out to be closed for lunch. Our next destination was the Reading Terminal Market which is something like our St. Lawrence Market but with more restaurant type outlets. As we were walking there, we saw a kid in a cape with a light sabre. I thought he was just a random nerd but then we started to see all kinds of people in superhero costumes. It turned out that there was a Comicon Convention in a building attached to the Market. This cause the Market to be extremely busy.

We eventually found a place to sit down and have a sandwich and some local beers. Luckily, we met two women from Philly who we chatted to as we waited and then sat with. They were very friendly and gave us a few tips about the city. We tried the pot roast sandwich and the Not Your Momma's Grilled Cheese.

After lunch, we just wandered around and checked out the local neighbourhood and some of the shopping/dining areas. There are many really narrow streets and old buildings in Philly. We saw the building where the Liberty Bell is kept but the lineup was massive so we didn't take the time to see it.

Heading back to the hotel for a bit of a break, we found the JKF Plaza or Love Park. This is where you find the iconic Philly Love monument. There was quite a crowd posing with it and doing a million selfies but I took a higher angled shot.

And then we saw this guy hanging out pretty much giving a sermon, but with rap overtones. It was quite "interesting".

But then he shattered the illusion by doing this!

After our break, we still didn't feel much like a full dinner so we headed out to find what was described as the oldest pub in Philly. It has been running since the 1860s so we thought it would be good to try it out. It's located in a laneway and is very popular. We were lucky to get a table in the upstairs part as it was soon overloaded with people who were mostly our kids' ages. And, they were fairly loud. We reailzed that this was why we don't frequent bars in the evening anymore!

We tried their beer sampler which had all local brews and a couple of snacks.

We also spent some time walking down to South Street, home to many bars and restaurants and neat looking buildings. There is apparently a mural tour because there are many large murals on the sides of buildings. We saw these tonight.