Philly

I have so much free time here in Philly thought i'd put to use this blog that I set up awhile ago that I never really posted in, what better way than to post about my first trip to the east coast! Yep you read right, first time, but hopefully first of many!

(mobile picture, forgot to change size so its tiny :/ .. LAX red eye)

Wednesday feels like ages ago already or maybe the time difference is really starting to throw me off. Anyway, Wednesday night took the red eye out of LA to Philly, which probably would of been easy peasy if these three people in front of us didn't keep talking the whole time, and on top of it order alcohol which reaked the whole time :( luckily i had my noise canceling headphones that drowned out the talking just wish the nasty smell of alcohol would of been easy to get rid of aswell. However the good thing was that the flight was a super quick 4 hours, but meant only 2 hours of real sleep. 

(mobile, small again :/... philly rent a car with ny plate)

We arrived in Philly thrusday morning 6 am east coast time, went straight to avis to get my sisters rent a car and tried our best to get early check in at the hotel. Sadly that was a bust,  but we killed time going through all the toursity things that my sister really wanted to see. We busted out almost everything in the historic Downtown Philly area. Thrusday was the only real day that my sister was getting the chance to see Philly, she has work the next two days till 5 so seeing all the sites that are open during the day is a no-no for her :(. My sister's boyfriend and I are basically just here to keep her company and see Philly of course. So we basically spent majority of our early morning/afternoon seeing all the historic sites. This week/weekend was such perfect timing to be here with presidents day coming up, it's making seeing all these important sites so much more meaningful. 

Thursday consisted of seeing the cathedral basilica of St. Peter and Paul, which really made me wish my parents were here to see how beautiful the cathedral is, I know they would of really loved seeing it and going to mass (we're hoping to catch morning mass on sunday). We made the mistake of taking our car to the cathedral which ended up in a good hour of driving around to find parking/figuring out where its ok to park. After the cathedral we decided to ditch our bags/car at our hotel and walk the whole day, which turned out to be the best decision, everyone walks here or takes the subway. Were staying at the Mariott which is easily the center of everything and conveniently near our mulitple stops for the next couple of days, the reading market! This place is great, it's basically a indoor farmers market/multiple restaurants/local goods. The closest thing it reminded me of was the market places in Philippines that basically had everything under one roof, except more organzied and no bargining..well i guess you could ...lol. We ate at this place called Tommy Dnick's that's famous for it's sandwiches, my tiredness of yesterday is making me forget details. My sister made a thursday itinerary for us, so i'll have to refer to it later..lol. I don't blame my sister, for one real good day setting up an itinerary is probably the best possible thing if you wanna get everything done. 

Next was all the historic things to do in Philly, which is beyond explanation and best explained in pictures, and due to my laziness and eagerness to go out to see Philly today is hindering me from posting any real nice pictures from my nikon, which by the way it's exactly 9:40 am right now :) 

To finish up my thursday, we got back to the hotel enjoyed the benefits of being a premiere platinum member courtesy of my sisters boyfriend. It sounds fancy, and yes actually it is. It's basically breakfast, horderves in the late afternoon and an after horderves desserts, all served in the concierge lounge. My sister's boyfriend has done a lot of company travel that made him a elite member at all Marriotts, which is giving us all these marriott perks for this trip.

(mobile, Geno's for Cheesesteaks)

The rest of the night consisted of taste testing philly cheesesteaks (buying one and cutting it into thirds). We drove over to a fairly popular cheesesteak spot Tony Luke's, it was on Man vs Food and throwdown with Bobby Flay, which Tony Luke won. We comapred Tony Luke's to Geno's steakhouse (our second stop). In my opinion Tony Luke's was by far the best between the both. Tony Luke's was freshly made and not just handed to us quickly like Geno's. I'll have to go into detail about that through pictures because it'll be definitely evident through pictures which is more fresh.

My laziness and eagerness to see the city is making me omit details, but I'm promising myself that i'll continue bloggin' after my trip, complete with pictures from my nikon instead of my stupid forgot to change image size mobile pictures. Till then I'll be out and about exploring! Tonight we'll be going to a 76ers vs Maverick's game. Which I am BEYOND excited for, probably the one thing I planned this whole trip thus far and that planning was made yesterday afternoon lol. 

Till then! :D

(mobile, Philly Morning, est 8:00 am..today)