Day 13 - Philadelphia

We got up bright and early after a disturbed night sleep.  Philadelphia is certainly noisy at night with sirens and helicopters all night - a bit like Washington but not quite as bad.

Before we headed out for the day we needed to move the car from off the street outside as it was only free on Sundays.

It was a bit weird as we had to leave the car in a 'manned' car park.  We had to leave the keys with the attendant (a man of very few words) to move into an available space - but as the car park was quite cramped it seemed like quite a tricky task to fit the cars in and the whole thing resembled a rather large game of tetris with cars - trying to fit cars in and get them out again when the owners returned. At $19 for 24 hours Kathy reassured us this was the best option.

....we are just hoping our belongings are still in the car when we collect it in the morning…

We had a brilliant day in Philadelphia today.  The sun shone all day and we walked miles all around the city.  We did lots of sightseeing, including:

The Rocky Steps - Ever since I saw the Rocky film in the early 80s I have wanted to run up the ‘Rocky Steps’ I never imagined for a minute I actually would so it was like a dream come true and  of course  I had to re-enact the famous scene from the film - yep starting from our apartment – Mark said that I have no sense of embarrassment but there was no way I had come all this way and wasn’t going to do it (video to follow maybe)  – there were a few other people doing just the same thing too but I would’ve been very surprised if there weren’t. 

We saw a great example of creating a job for yourself out of nothing - there was a man near the  Rocky Statue offering to assist with photographs in the expectation/hope of getting a tip - he was obviously there for the day as he had his camp chair and bottles of water, constantly humming and singing the rocky tune.

Move that flamin bus!!

We also visited Elfreth's Alley– which is said to be the oldest residential street in America and Betsy Ross House - purported to be the site where the seamstress and flag-maker Betsy Ross (1752-1836) lived when she sewed the first American Flag.

The Thinker statue at Rodin Museum, The Liberty Bell and coincidentally when we were leaving the building we saw the German President, Joachim Gauck, who just happened to be visiting Liberty Bell at the same time – it was quite amusing as there was a heavy police presence and the roads were being closed so we knew something was happening.  Everyone was waiting with their cameras wondering if it was going to be Obama or maybe the Queen but no it was some guy that no one recognised – everyone was asking each other who he was, in the end we managed to find out who he was - a little disappointing.

The Thinker

 
We also stopped off at Love Park and saw the famous artwork and the pink fountain.

We enjoyed a really interesting look around the Visitor Center of the US Mint – and you could actually see the coins being made in the factory – well worth a visit.

Sadly no photos allowed inside the mint

One thing we have noticed, the Americans we've met seem to love that we have come from England, they love all the history and the Queen – what they lack in Geography knowledge they certainly make up for in history.  A Policeman we got talking to at the US Mint wanted to know how the Queen was doing, like we knew her personally and how he liked her much better than Prince Charles who he described as a ‘a bit of a stuffed shirt’, it was hilarious.  The owner of our B&B was mad about the whole Downton Abbey thing too.

 Out of all the cities we’ve visited on this trip, Philadelphia is so far my favourite.