Rocky Steps and Our Nation's Capitol

Despite the crappy night of sleep I got up early so I could get in line for a ticket to go on the Liberty Square tour. Leann didn't seem to be too keen on going so I headed out all by my lonesome back to the visitor's center. It wasn't open yet but I was among the first 10 in line so I figured I'd get one for sure. Since the next day was July 4 they had put out cardboard headstones to memorialize the troops that have died in the Iraq/Afghanistan conflict. I though that was pretty touching.



Once the doors opened up I got in line and was able to score a ticket to the first tour of the day (they are free). Since I had time to kill before the tour (9 a.m.) I read through the exhibits I'd missed the day before and had a little bit of breakfast. The tour was pretty interesting and the tour guide was hilarious. They take you through a few different buildings and give you some interesting history to the place. It was sort of electrifying to think of the great decisions that had been made here and the people who had once sat there. Both the constitution and the declaration of independence were signed in Liberty Hall.





After the tour I headed back to the hostel to collect Leann and our bags and go find the Philadelphia Museum of Art which is where Rocky actually ran up the steps and the Rocky statue is outside the grounds. The GPS did a great job of getting us there and we ran up the steps ourselves and took pictures with the statue.



There was also a really neat water fountain with a statue of George Washington in front of the museum that we took pictures of.



Getting out of Philly sucked it big time. Apparently the road we were on is a major artery to the art museum as well as the zoo and everyone and their dog was trying to get to those places. It probably took us more than 20 minutes to go maybe a mile. Once we were on the freeway we made good time though and got into D.C around 11. I dropped Leann off at her hotel and made it over to my brother's hotel to pick him up and then we headed into VA where our hotel was. After getting settled in we caught the metro into the city. The entrance to the metro is this long escalator ride deep into the pits of hell which I thought was pretty cool.



After we got off the metro we headed straight to the Smithsonian museum of natural history. Our first stop was the restaurant as we were both starving and after paying our arm and leg we had a fine meal. We probably spent 2-3 hours in the museum, wandering from room to room. They have this neat 'life on earth' timeline that you follow as you walk through the museum with lots of modern animals, extinct animals, and dinosaur skeletons. They also have a really need room with precious stones and just a bunch of different minerals from mines around the world.

We really didn't have a plan on where to go next so we wandered toward the capital building, into a sculpture garden, and stumbled upon the National Archives. Since it didn't look too busy we decided we'd go see our famous documents. Standing outside in the heat was terrible...it was in the mid 90's with probably 80% humidity so the ice cream lady was making a killing. Once inside we saw an introductory video and then stood in line for maybe half an hour before getting to see the documents. Some of the documents were in way better shape than others but it was still pretty cool to see these originals and think back to the climate of the day and how brave and forward thinking these people were.



Next up was the Washington monument. I later learned that the reason it's called the Washington monument and not memorial is that construction was begun while he was still alive. Since the Lincoln memorial is just a little bit further down the mall we headed there next. Before you get to the reflecting pond there is a WWII memorial with some beautiful fountains that we stopped to take pictures of. At the other end of the reflecting pond is the Lincoln memorial which was probably my favorite thing to see in D.C. Lincoln was such a force and his untimely death was a tragedy for the American people. It gave me tingles to sit there and thing of all that he had accomplished and what he stood for.



Since we still didn't have much of a plan we just sort of wandered around. We saw the back side of the White House and some older administrative buildings and then found ourselves some dinner at this good pizza place. Since we were both pretty beat we just found our way back to the hotel and called it a night.





Washington Pics

Philly time

After getting into Philly late and helping out the lost Frenchman, Leann and I slept in a little and woke up to find our roomates about to go out on a jog. I hurriedly dressed in my own running gear and went on a short run myself. The are where we had chosen to stay turned out to have been an area where the elite of the city had built mansions on generous estates. At some point the majority of the land was purchased by the city and turned into various parks with a nice jogging path running alongside the road. I went past a couple of other mansions that offered tours and ran back to the hostel. We showered up and hopped in the car for the drive into Philly proper. The drive was pretty uneventful though when we got into the downtown area Betty went crazy. First she didn't tell us to turn onto the street we needed to until we had already passed it and then she tried to get us to turn down this 'road' that might have been a road for horses back in the 1800's but certainly wasn't wide enough to accept any sort of modern automobile. We finally found our way in and parked (perhaps illegally...) and got to the hostel right as they were 'closing' for the morning. What a weird place...they basically shut down for the afternoon (9 a.m. to 4 p.m.) so you have to be out and about in the city. The girls that were closing up the place seemed to be pretty annoyed that we were there so we took off and found a nice place to park the car by Penn's landing.

After selecting our travel gear from the car we headed off to find a nice place to breakfast. There was an older looking diner with a bar counter that wrapped around the inside so we thought that would be a nice place to eat. It turned out to be a great little eatery and had been around for some time (50 yrs+) and our waitress looked like she had been working there since day 1 :) She was quite old and had a bit of a palsy so she shook a bit when she was talking. Our food was good and afterwards we headed out to the liberty square area to see what was there. They have a great big visitor's center with plenty of exhibits to look at but after we found out that they didn't have any more tickets to go visit Liberty Hall we left. While Leann grabbed some Z's I went over to the Constitution center which turned out to be a lame exhibit with an copy of the constitution which you had to pay to see. After leaving I picked up Leann and we headed over to the visitor's center for the Liberty Bell. The building is pretty new and has some neat exhibits as well as the Liberty Bell itself. We took our pictures with it and then headed out to meander around the city and see some of the other sites (like Betsy Ross' house).



The downtown area is littered with various historic buildings, monuments, and interpretive sites. They have a set of people who actual come in character to a location and discuss the events that transpired there but we didn't get to see any of those. We eventually made our way to the chinatown area and then found this really neat place called the Terminal Market which is basically a bazaar inside of this building. Lucky for us the Amish were there that day. They had a wide variety of jellies to try and I had some Dandelion (tastes like honey), Tomato (too sweet)and Spicy (just as it sounds)jell as well as some Pumpkin Butter. I ended up getting a jar of the Dandelion, Spicy, and Pumpkin butter to take home. I also tried to talk to the sales-guy about how the Amish reconciled using electricity at the market and he said it was okay with them (still not sure why) and that many of them were Mennonites which use more modern technology but try to take the best of things and ignore the worst (i.e. pr0n). I remembered reading that the Mennonites were granted some time when they turned 19 or so to go out into the world and decide if they wanted to remain Mennonites and that often times they are quite debaucherous. However, this dude didn't seem inclined to talk about it only muttering that some friends of his had gone to Denver to see a football game. While I was talking to him Leann ordered some BBQ and then we went outside to eat it. Man, that was some good BBQ! After we ate we went back into the market and grabbed some of the, if not THE, best ice cream I've ever had. It was so creamy and flavorful...yums! However the people were not interested at all in talking to me...I guess they just wanted my money :)



After we left the market we decided to try and find the Rocky statue. We both thought it was at the city hall building so we walked up there and then all around it only to find out that no, the Rocky statue is not in fact found at the city hall building. It was a beautiful structure though and there were several other interesting buildings in the immediate vicinity so it wasn't a total wash.



Since we'd been out wandering for quite a while the hostel was finally open so we headed back to the car to pick up our bags and then went back to the hostel to check in. Luckily they had a room for Leann and since our clothes were pretty much all dirty she did wash for us while I sat and blogged. By the time we were finished it was pretty late and time for dinner so we asked about where to go to get a philly cheese steak. Apparently the two 'original' places, Gino's and Pat's, were quite a ways away from where we were staying so she recommended we go to Steve's (I think...) which was a lot closer and she said tasted essentially the same. I think it was about half a mile to walk there and the street it was on was packed with clubs and 20 somethings. The restaurant itself is pretty non-distinct and you get into a big line with everyone else and order it. I got mine with provologne and no onions but I think I should have got it with 'the whiz' (yes, cheeze whiz). The guy cooking the meat (huge black dude) kept putting water on the meat so it wouldn't burn but I think it ended up just making the meat taste like water. To be honest I wasn't that impressed with it. I think it would've been better with some grilled peppers on it but the meat was just so bland that I really couldn't taste much of anything. On the plus side, I had a yoohoo for the first time in years and that was really good. I think Leann's was better as she got the onions and peppers on hers but she wasn't all that impressed either. At least we tried it though :) The walk back to the hostel was uneventful and we pretty much just went to bed when we got back. Sometime in the middle of the night these guys came in and turned on the lights which made it really hard to sleep plus I kept alternating between hot and cold so I ended up getting a terrible nights sleep.