Friday, November 30, 2012
Coffee Mug Murderer - No More!
Back in August I had an interesting run in with the (alleged) coffee mug murderer on my JFK-LAX flight. Turns out they're dropping the charges with not a lot of other details. Oh, well. Still a cool story I guess.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
First Time in Philly
Ding dong |
I got to Philly by taking Amtrak down from Connecticut – it was
only about a 3 hour ride. I’ve gotten
used to taking the trains between the major cities like I did on my trips
around Belgium and Holland a few years ago.
It’s kind of nice avoiding the traffic and relaxing. I used to get pretty motion sick but I’ve
gotten to the point where I can do a crossword puzzle and light reading on the
train. Tag and Missy, his girlfriend,
picked me up from the train station and took me to South Street. I immediately recognized it from the opening
credits of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
The bars were relatively quiet (as it was a Thursday night) so we only
had a few drinks at Jon's and went to their apartment.
The next day Tag played tour guide around downtown
Philly. We walked by Betsy Ross’ house,
but we didn’t have much interest/time to go inside. The Liberty Bell was free to see and we only
had to wait in a line for about 5 minutes.
It’s funny that I recognized it more from National Treasure than
from history class. We also briefly
walked into the massive Masonic Temple which was a place where the founding
fathers of lore made plans for our new country. That looked cool but we really didn't have time for it either.
Creepy Wooden Statues R Us |
Later that afternoon we drove by the Philadelphia Museum of Art (made famous from Rocky), but I didn’t get to take a good picture. They were preparing for the PhiladelphiaMarathon later in the weekend and we had to stay on schedule. I was meeting my friends David and Carrie for
dinner and they lived a little ways outside of the city. David and I went to grad school together and
I hadn’t seen him since he and Carrie had their 3 kids (chaos!!!). So we got a chance to catch up and have a
home cooked meal… I also got a little sneak peak on how parenthood changes
everything!
Geno's vs. Pat's |
We took it easy the next morning and started
prepping for everyone to come over.
We got the house in order and then took another stroll around Old City. Before the party got going we had to take a little car ride to South
Philly to sample cheese steaks at Geno’s and Pat’s. These two Philly cheese steak rivals have been going at it for years, and it's something you have to do when you visit the city. Just know what you're going to order beforehand so you don't get yelled at. Tag and Missy were well versed in the lingo and we split up our orders so we could all sample
both… I ended up being a Geno’s guy for the bread and cuts of meat although I
think everyone else was a bigger fan of Pat’s. (makes me want a cheese steak right now...)
Musical Chairs Flip Cup |
After a short night of sleep I
caught a taxi in the morning to the bus station. Instead of taking the train back to
Connecticut, Tag recommended that I take the Megabus back to New
York. You could get there for $20 and it
took about the same amount of time. I would
still have to cross Manhattan to get to Grand Central for a train back to Stamford,
but it was cheaper and easier to do it that way. I don’t feel like I got a FULL weekend doing
things in Philly… seeing the Rocky statue close up, soaking in a little more
history, etc. so I’ll have to come back for that.
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