Vacation Part 1: Philadelphia

This is the first in a series of many posts about our vacation to the Northeast. We started our trip in Philadelphia, PA. Many have asked why we chose to visit Philly since we had so many (seemingly) more exciting cities on our agenda. There are a couple of answers to this. First of all, Southwest has a killer nonstop flight to Philly from Austin, so we ended up saving a lot of time and sanity by flying into there. Second of all, Travis's cousin, Joel, just moved to Philly to start medical school, so it afforded us a good opportunity to see him.

We spent less than 24 hours in Philly, which is not a lot, but we were able to learn several things about it before leaving.
1. There aren't a whole lot of "landmark" things to see and do there. Besides the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and the Rocky steps, there aren't very many things to see for sightseers. (Not a knock on them at all, because you could definitely say the same thing about Austin.)
2. Philly is not such a safe place. If you wander too far outside of the center of the City, you could get yourself into some rough areas. Luckily, we did not learn this from experience.
3. We had cheese steak sandwiches at this one restaurant that was supposedly pretty legit, and Travis and I both agreed that Texadelphia does a pretty good job making its sandwiches "authentic" compared to the real thing. All in all, however, I don't really get the cheese steak obsession, because they are kind of heavy and gross. To each his own I guess.

Here are some pictures from our short stay in Philly.

The Liberty Bell. It took me at least 5 minutes to get a shot with no other people in it. Apparently it is pretty cool to pose in front of it.


Downtown Philly


Independence Hall