Our Yankee Vacation: Part 3

Our next destination in our Yankee Vacation was Philadelphia. We have friends that live there & they offered their home to all 7 of us for the night before we continued on to NYC. Well, I should clarify that they (Tim & Allyson) were Mark & Melissa's friends. Melissa & Allyson had been friends since high school. Jeremy knew Tim from college. As for me, I'm pretty sure I met them once while Jeremy & I were dating but other than that we're friends on Facebook! But they are great & the kind of people you feel like you've known for years. And we really appreciated their hospitality.

So we got up early & arrived in Philly aroudn 9am. Picked up Dunkin Donuts & enjoyed a sugary goodness of a breakfast along with some great coffee. Then we all got bundled up to head into the city.

Our first stop was the Curtis Center. This is where many magazines had their beginning, including Ladies Home Journal & the Saturday Evening Post. Inside was also a beautiful glass mural that is in a scene from "Unbreakable".

Then we made the long walk in the rain to the Liberty Bell. I say long only because when you're in the rain a couple blocks does seem like a long walk. And especially when the 6 adults are also bringing along kids ages 6, 4, 23 months, 17 months, & 4 months. But the kids were troopers & did a great job with little complaints.

The Liberty Bell was not as big as I always pictured it. And I never thought we could get as close as we did to it.

Our jeans were soaked & stepping through unavoidable puddles soaked our socks & shoes.

We then walked through more rain to Independence Hall. The time on our tickets (which were free) wasn't for nearly an hour but the people were nice enough to let us get in on the next group since we had babies who were hungry & wet. The tour was actually pretty boring since the lady seemed to still be in 5th grade teacher mode.

Oh, we have often vented about the very rude girl we dealt with while waiting to enter the Hall. The whole crowd is waiting under a walkway huddled up as close as we can to stay warm & keep the rain out of our faces. This girl wants to get to her friends on the other side & rather than just walk around the pillar she wants us to move the double stroller when we have no other place to go. It was one of those moments I wanted to just be like so many others there are & say something rude back to her but I refrained.

After that we went back to Tim & Allyson's, got out of our wet clothes & into warm pajamas & enjoyed our first real Philly cheesesteak. And I have to say it really is as good as they say it is! So good that I kinda wish I could have another.

Then we just sat around, played some Halo 3 (yeah, even I did!), & just enjoyed Christian fellowship.

Little did we know that we would be back sooner than we thought . . .