I love Philly. I spent a month there doing thesis research when I was in college and Dan and I visited a few years ago. It's such an easy trip from NYC and now that we have a car it was even faster (see ya never Megabus!). Mandy had never been to Phily so we put it on our summer bucket list.
Dan, Kip, and I loaded up on Saturday morning and picked-up Mandy in New Jersey on the way there. Kip cooperated by napping in the car for the first bit.
We got to Philly around 10 am, parked the car, and walked the sites. Things are much different now that we have Kip. It was also the peak of tourist season there so we opted out of the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. We mainly just walked around and read lots of the historical markers and I showed Mandy some of the things I discovered from my research.
Then we headed to get cheesesteaks for lunch!
This is the place Dan and I went to when we visited a few years ago and it was SO good. The place was packed and we waited in line for close to an hour. But it was worth it! I'm bummed I didn't take a picture because I was inhaling it. It was SOOO good. Kip liked it too!
After lunch we walked through the Revolutionary War Museum. It's a new-ish museum and something new for all of us. Personally, there was FAR too much label text but good otherwise. It was crowded and we had Kip in the carrier and so we ended up moving through the exhibition pretty quickly.
The forecast for the day was overcast and rainy but fortunately it didn't start raining until later in the afternoon. We popped inside Reading Terminal Market but that's where all the other tourists were so we grabbed some cookies quickly and headed across the street to check-in at our hotel.
Kip is currently in a destroy-everything phase and cannot be contained. We let him work it out in the hotel room and then headed out a little later to explore some more.
The rain was picking up outside but we hit a few shops before deciding on an early dinner at Maggiano's. It was a choice of convenience. Kip was hitting his limit and we wanted something fast and not crowded. Since it was 5 pm we beat the rush and were just across the street from our hotel.
Originally, our plan was to get two adjoining rooms so that we could put Kip to bed at his normal time and then still hang out in the other room and watch TV. The hotel couldn't guarantee that the rooms would be next to each other and we didn't want to risk that and pay for an extra useless room. So we hoped that Kip would just fall asleep while we hung out. Nope. We eventually got him down around 9 pm which is 3 hours after his normal bedtime. I had to crawl into the pack-n-play and lay with him until he finally fell asleep and then ninja jump out of the pack-n-play without him waking up. So then, there we were all in bed at 9 pm. I'm a night owl so that was rotten for me. It took forever to fall asleep and I was worried the whole night about Kip waking up. His screams are SO loud now. He woke up around 1 am at which point we pulled him in the bed with Dan and me. It was a full-sized bed, not queen, so it was a tight fit and not very comfortable for all three of us. I was never so glad when 5:30 rolled around and we could get on with the day.
So, yeah. Hotel rooms and an 11 month old don't really work well. We all got up early and found a popular donut shop for breakfast.
After that, we couldn't do much since it was still so early and many places were closed entirely on Sunday or not opening for several hours. So, we packed-up and Dan drove us about 40 minutes to an outlet mall where we shopped before heading home.
We all had fun and it was a pretty smooth trip, considering. It wasn't the adventuring vacations that Dan and I are used to but I'm grateful we got out and did it anyways. Hopefully we can go back in a few years when Kip is bigger.
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