48hrs in Philadelphia

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I live in North Carolina, but occasionally travel to the Adirondack region of New York. That's where I spent my summers as a kid, and it's a great place to cool off and escape the extremely hot summers in the south.

On my last trip from NY back to NC I decided to visit the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia.

Parking.

I pulled in to Philly and quickly discovered that what I heard was true. There's basically nowhere to park. I currently live in a small town in North Carolina and drive a heavy duty Dodge 2500 with the big crew cab and a long bed. The truck is around 25' long and takes up 1.5 parking spaces. I can pretty much go wherever I'd like with ease and even pull up close to businesses. In Philly, you probably can't park a Prius without a special permit. The secret here for tourists is to find a hotel that allows free parking. My hotel of choice was Loews Hotel.

On to tourist attractions. And Uber.

The family and I did all of the touristy things once ditching out SUV. We walked, everywhere. After miles and miles of walking the kids were about to have a full blown meltdown, so I installed Uber on my phone and tapped the app. I had never used Uber before. About 75 seconds later a car pulls up to let me in. WHAT ON EARTH. How was I going through life without Uber before this?

I had the first driver take us to our destination. Once we were done taking selfies at the Liberty Bell, we hailed an Uber and went to the Benjamin Franklin Museum. This was so much better than walking. In fact, if our destination was more than 2 blocks away, I just took an Uber!

My Uber drivers came from all walks of life. Only one drove like a complete maniac. I secretly searched for Uber accidents in Philly and saw several attorneys advertising their services, along with some very detailed pages about Uber accidents. Terrified, I shut my phone off until it was time to get out and pay the driver. However, the rest of the Uber drivers were great.

Our favorite attraction was the Betsy Ross House. There were extremely informative and friendly people working here making the trip very special.

Heights.

I'm used to visiting the North Carolina mountains and gazing across the valleys and peaks as far as the eye can see. At least then, my feet are still on the ground. In Philly, you go up into very tall buildings. I'm terrified of heights so I decided to do what? Visit One Liberty Observation Deck. I paid the admission and zipped up an elevator. The ride is about 45 seconds as you zip up 57 stories. I think if the ride was 5 seconds longer I would have died. The elevator goes up, up, up as quick as my anxiety. Thankfully, the door opens and I get out before having a full blown panic attack. The view is spectacular! At the Loews hotel, I was on the 20th floor as well. In my head I wondered if I'd be better off on the ground floor in the event of an earthquake. No - too much cement to crush me. What about the top floor? No, too much of a fall.

Food.

I think my biggest let down was the Philly Cheese Steak. I am a huge fan of great cheese. I do not eat processed foods. I'm also a beef connoisseur of sorts, or maybe just a beef snob. I get my meat from a sustainable, local farm who has grass fed cows. So, what was this delicious cheese steak? It was literally canned cheese put onto shaved beef. The beef was ok, but, all that white bread and canned cheese would have made me sick if we didn't split the sandwich 4 ways.

My favorite part of the trip was most definitely the Reading Terminal Market. Food vendors from all around were there serving up all sorts of great snacks. There were various ethnic groups creating craft meals and wonderful breakfasts available. I tried food from half a dozen vendors and it was all perfect.

At dinner time we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe. The food was ok; I mostly wanted the T-shirt.

I'm sure I missed out on a lot of great food here.

Recap

Overall we had a great time and spent 2 whole days walking and Ubering all over Philly. I can see how people love the city, and I like it a lot better than NYC which is just too crowded. However, after 2 days, we all agreed we wanted to get back to the countryside.

This was not my best trip and we hit all the tourist destinations. While we had a lot of fun I probably should have researched it better. I mostly wanted to get a feel for the city, and we definitely accomplished that by walking until our Fitbit batteries died and talking to dozens of local people.

Oh yeah, we saw an awesome group of kids riding bicycles down the street. That was awesome and there must have been 70 kids riding. That's great - out in the country you ride by yourself or if you're lucky there's a neighbor nearby who will ride with you.

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