Philadelphia Blog – written by the Boston Pool Champion, Zoe.

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I just wanted to add something to Brett’s Boston blog, we left Toronto and were travelling somewhere in the U.S., in the middle of the night, I woke up, looked outside and saw that it was snowing pretty heavily, snow on the road and the bus was fish tailing along the road, freaked me out, I just went back to sleep and pretended that it never happened – denial – I have come to conclude is my favourite friend!

So we left Boston on Sunday morning, not happy about being awake early on a Sunday morning, but thems the breaks! We caught the bus to Philadelphia, via New York. We drove into Manhattan, changed buses and drove straight back out again. Being there made us want to stay in New York of course! So we arrived in Philly in the evening, had some dinner, watched a movie and went to bed….looking forward to the hockey tomorrow night!

So Monday morning and having trouble remembering what day it is, but that’s ok, I’m on holiday….well actually I’m unemployed, so I’m on permanent holiday, which sounds pretty good to me! So Monday in Philly, we went to Independence Hall, went through security – told to undo my jacket and pull it up so the security people could see whether or not I was carrying a gun as weapons weren’t allowed in the museum, this didn’t make me feel all that good about being in the U.S…. So at Independence Hall, where some famous stuff happened in American history….Don’t want to go into too much detail, because I wasn’t really paying attention on the tour….got a little bit bored. But it’s where Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and some other people wrote the Declaration of Independence, and read it out to the citizens of the soon to be U.S. of A. Then we saw the Declaration of Independence all written up in another Hall and then we wandered over to the Liberty Bell (which by all accounts is a very important piece of history and symbol in U.S. history but is really only a small, broken bell). A little aside, I just want to apologise about my interpretation of American History, can’t say that overall it interests me all that much, so chances are that I may have left out some important things, or made them up. But at the Liberty Bell Museum (the Bell only sounded a handful of times) I did learn a little bit more about slavery in the U.S. and I have to say that at some points I found it almost too sad to continue to learn about….but good old George Washington had 8 slaves, although there was a free Black community in Philly, he did what he could to continue to keep his slaves by means of sending them to another location every 6 months, in order to get through a loophole in the law. So then after the Liberty Bell, we went to the U.S. Mint, nothing really exciting to say about this other than we were about to stay warm for a little while and we saw some coins and medals being made. We went back to the hostel for a while, then it was out to watch the ice hockey, Philadelphia Flyers (which Brettie says are top of the league) v Florida Panthers (which Brettie tells me are about 3rd last). Needless to say that Florida won 5 to nothing….Pretty bad for the home crowd, I think it was just about empty with Philly 4 nothing down and 8 mins to go….But at least we got to see a few goals.

So Tuesday, I got in trouble for sleeping in and generally dawdling, hehe. This comment is from Brettie: “I beg to differ”. So we went to the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts, it’s famous for obviously having lots of paintings, sculptures etc, but it’s also famous for the stairs out the front, which Rocky ran up in his movie! So of course Brettie ran up the stairs, with the fists pumping in the air, I of course walked/wheezed my way up the stairs. Had a wander around the museum, saw lots of paintings by famous dead people. Then we went to the Eastern State Penitentiary, which was the first Penitentiary, the idea of which originated from the Quakers who thought that having a prisoner not talk to anyone, see any one (which meant prisoners were blindfolded when being moved around the prison) and to live in solitary confinement would be a good way to serve penance for their crime and to think about what they had done. It was also famous for having heating and plumbing in the cells, both of which didn’t work properly and also for the layout of the prison. Anyway, I don’t think that the concept really worked – after a riot in the penitentiary and 142 years after it first opened the prison was closed, left abandoned for a few decades and then re-opened into a museum. Al Capone was also a prisoner there, random bit of U.S. history for you all! So after the penitentiary we went to the Mutter Museum, which is at the College of Physicians, where you can learn about the anatomy of humans, through photos, cadavers and wax examples and also learn all of the weird and gross things that can happen to you. Don’t ever want to get syphilis, not a lovely way to die….though it was good to see how medicine has progressed and the collection was pretty extensive, saw the thorax of some president….strange….

Then after the Mutter museum we went and had lunch/dinner at a falafel restaurant, which was delicious, then we went back to the hostel and watched another movie, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, one of the crappest movies ever!

So now we’re onto Wednesday, sorry if this is boring you, luckily we won’t be quizzing you on the content of our blog, so you can just look at the photos if you like! So Wednesday we walked what felt like all of Philadelphia, we walked to a Clay Museum, which was really a shop, though pretty cool, walked half way to New Jersey, which seems like a long way, but it’s just over a bridge on the other side of Delaware River, walked past Penn’s Landing – another U.S. history fact, some guy named William Penn landed at this spot from England and that’s all I know about him. Then we wandered some more to a restaurant where Brettie had a cheesesteak, a Philly specialty, pretty gross looking if you ask me, there’s a photo on the wall of a 14 yr old eating 12 cheese steaks on one and a half hours….Then onto City Hall where we went up the top of the Tower, me slightly freaking out, but we made it down safely. So tonight is our last night in Philly, onto Washington D.C. tomorrow! There may be a chance of snow on Christmas Day!

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