Spring!

I planted the roots of a flower my mother-in-law gave me last year after the flower had died. She said it would come back if I did. So I put it in a pot and set it out on the deck and proceeded to neglect it all summer, fall and winter. We had nice weather this past weekend so we ventured back out onto the deck and I got such a nice surprise! The flower is growing!!

Philadelphia - Day 3

After a long afternoon and night of drinking the previous day, we planned a nice and greasy brunch for Sunday. Philadelphia has a small Chinatown so we went there for dim sum at Ocean Harbor! We waited for 45 minutes before we could get a table but once we sat down we instantly had a table full of yummy food! Mr_BTM and I sampled the chicken feet and tripe but Adam would only try the tripe. Silly Adam! The chicken feet are much tastier than the tripe! We got a lot of other dishes as well, including the fried shrimp and squid. Delicious meal and just the thing to power us through the rest of the day. After dim sum we took the long walk down Benjamin Franklin Parkway, past the museums to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, made famous for that scene in Rocky where he runs up the stairs. However, if you want your picture taken with the statue of Rocky, you'll have to wait in line! We did not wait in the line, but just took a picture of the statue and the line, together. While we didn't run up the stairs like Rocky we did walk up them. The view from the top of the stairs is quite stunning. We lucked out on weather and had sunny skies all weekend. The line outside was really long and we figured out that the first Sunday of the month is pay what you want! So, we didn't want to wait in the line so we walked around to the back of the museum and walked around part of Fairmount Park, along the Schuylkill River. After roaming the park for a while, we noticed the museum had a back entrance with no line! So we did get to go into the museum. We walked around the museum for a while and decided to head back to the hotel, we were all tired! We had dinner at a noodle place and afterwards went looking around for a dessert place. We only had to walk a few blocks and we found the perfect place! An old time ice cream parlor called The Franklin Fountain. We got awesome ice cream and shakes here and was the perfect ending to our day. Now, stuffed with ice cream and tired, Adam caught the train and went back to Baltimore and we called it an early night.

Philadelphia - Day 2

Saturday morning we were joined by Adam who came up from Baltimore to visit the city with us. We started with breakfast at a nearby diner and headed to the Independence Visitor's Center, conveniently located a block from our hotel. The Visitor's Center has some displays on the history of Philadelphia and a few movies, which we didn't watch. We did pick up our tickets for the Independence Hall Tour later that day. Next door was the Liberty Bell Center, which houses a small museum on the history of the bell and the actual bell! Pictured is me with the bell on the non-cracked side. Tourists everywhere! Since we had an hour to kill before our tour, we decided to walk around the rest of the Independence National Historic Park and visited a lot of the buildings and parks.

Second Bank of the United States

After going through security, we got our place in line for the

Independence Hall tour.

The tour was fun and informational (the Declaration of Independence was only adopted on July 4th!) but we were getting hungry so we headed south towards South Street and the Italian Market.

Mr & I split a sandwich we picked up from one of the deli's at the market. Really delicious! Adam opted for the more popular philly cheesesteak from Pat's (Geno's, the other cheesesteak place, is pictured below) while Mr & I ate at the Royal Tavern. The lines at these two places were really long and we didn't want a cheesesteak that badly. Royal Tavern was much better and had beer! After a nice long lunch and a few beers, we were ready to head to the Philly Craft Brew Fest at the Navy Yards in south Philly. We braved the subway to get there and the brew fest was offering free shuttle rides from the train station to the event, which was at

the Navy Yard, not really within walking distance of the station. The brew fest was very crowded but they had lots of beers to try. After an hour or so, we were getting pretty tired of the crowds and had tried over 15 beers at this point. So we opted to leave a bit early, grab a cab and head back to the hotel and hang out in the Old Town neighborhood for the rest of the evening.

Philadelphia - Day 1

We decided to take a long weekend and head up to Philadelphia to check out the city and take a short break from work. I had been to Philly once in high school but never spent any serious time there. Mr_BTM had never been. In preparation for the trip, Mr did a ton of homework and created a handy google map of places to see, things to eat and where to stay. We started our trip Friday morning with a ride on the Greyhound. An no, it wasn't as bad as everyone says! It was quite nice, actually. We started our day with a tour of the City Hall tower. To get to the top of the tower (pictured left), you need to take a very small elevator, only large enough to take 4 tourists and a security guard. Once at the top you get a greate 365 degree view of the city! We had no idea this was an option so we were pleasently surprised at this spectacular view, and only for $10 total! After the tour we walked towards Rittenhouse Square to check out the park and the neighborhood. Our first option for lunch was closed so we fell back on option two, Good Dog Bar. We choose the burger and the mac n' cheese and a few good beers. After lunch we walked to JFK Plaza to see the infamous Love statue and boy was that lame! It's such a small statue in the middle of a concrete square. So underwhelming. After that we walked along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and toured the Rodin Museum. On the long walk back to the hotel we stoped by theSEPTA Museum although there wasn't much there. For dinner we had reservations at Zahav, an Isreali restuarant. We each had the Taste of Zahav where you can choose three dishes of your choice plus dessert. We had an amazing meal and even tried duck hearts (pictured) for the first time! After dinner, we wanted to grab a drink so we went to Triumph Brewing Company. This place was packed! We were able to grab a beer from the upstairs bar, but once we started drinking, realized we were really full from dinner! Plus, the beer wasn't that good. So we left the crowded bar and went back to the hotel. Really tired after all our walking around!