We started the day with drizzling rain as we headed into Philly.  We enjoyed wandering down to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and posing with the Rocky statue.  The building itself, is also beautiful.  There are many historical statues all over the city to look at. We then walked by the Eastern State Penitentiary and went in for a quick look. Since we knew we had a full day, we decided to pass on the tour. The first few pictures below are smaller because even though we had the good camera, we left the battery in the car. We did have our IPhones with us though so we could at least get a few pics.

We then headed to the other side of the city to see the Liberty Bell  The line was ridiculously long, but we stuck it out. The Christ Church burial ground where Benjamin Franklin was buried was just down the street, so we took a little stroll down that way.  Trevor was able to squeeze his arms through the gate to get a pretty good picture of the grave site. It was early afternoon so we decided to head over to Campo’s and get one of those famous Philly Cheesesteaks.  On the way we passed the US Mint, so we decided to go in and take a tour of how the coins are designed, produced and distributed. When we got to Campo’s, I thought what a little dive of a joint, but good food.  I got a Cheesesteak with Cheese Wiz.  Who would have thunk it?  It is one of their specialties.  It kinda tasted like Heather’s awesome cheese dip.

To walk off our full stomach’s, we walked down to Christ Church and since it was around 3:30p, we decided to head up to NYC.  We immediately made a mistake missing I-95N and ended up on Rt. 1. This was 20 miles of 60mph with many red lights throughout the way.  I have never seen anything like this road.  This mistake costs us about an hour because we just missed our window to get out of Philly before major rush hour.  Turns out when we got on I-95N, and it was pretty smooth sailing… UNTIL we came into NYC.  It took us over 90 minutes to get 4 miles through the Lincoln Tunnel.  My foot was killing me from the constant start and stop.  Since it took so long to get to NYC, we almost missed the Night Tour of Manhattan and Brooklyn on the double-decker bus we had paid for. Even though we got their 10 minutes late and the computers were shut off, I was able to “convince” the Manager to let us on the bus.

The tour was full of really cool history facts.  When we went to Brooklyn, via the Manhattan Bridge, we learned about Gramaldi’s Pizza and the Brooklyn Ice Cream place down the street from it.  My next trip to NYC, I need to check this out.

We knew parking was going to be a concern for us because of the tall vehicle, but were relieved when we were able to leave it on the street overnight. We just needed to get up early the next morning and get it.  We plan to do just that.

More tomorrow…