We stopped in New York, NY and had the pleasure of hanging with my good friend Rachel. Rachel lived in NY for many years, so she was able to show us some NYC tricks, like taking the free commuter fairy to Staten Island to have a good look at Lady Liberty.
I was super excited that I successfully drove in New York City. Granted we didn’t go down to Times Square… due to time constraints (haha, damn I’m punny) because we had to move on quickly to Philly. You can have the real life experience of driving in NY by watching the time lapse video below:
My guess was that Philly was about the size of Boston. Turns out, Philly is not the size of Boston; it is 3x larger! I had no idea this city was so large. Due to my lack of research and experiences, I booked us a place right in the heart of downtown. As we drove in late at night and on the weekend, I was questioning my decision greatly.
When we arrived, I parked illegally due to the gentleman behind me just hanging out in the loading zone, so Jeffrey unloaded while the van sat crookedly off the curb. While he was carrying each individual bag up to the 15th floor of the condo apartment because there was no cart, I witnessed a drug transaction take place with the gentleman behind me. At that point, I thought for sure I had made a mistake staying downtown.
We ended up unloading everything and going straight to bed. The next morning was anew! The stormy weather wasn’t too bad and the city felt significantly safer. We took a hop-on-hop-off bus tour and completed a walking history tour. We saw the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was drafted. I would recommend the bus for sure if you a visiting a large/new city and only have one day. Below is a shot of China town from the bus.
Of course we had to do the Rocky staircase workout:
Then we did the most important thing of all: FOUND THE #1 RATED CHEESE STEAK establishment. That establishment was Jim’s. OMG – I am craving one of those right now. We waited in line and experienced the mouthwatering amazingness of an authentic cheese steak sandwich. I have no earthly idea what the hell the other damn restaurants are doing saying they sell cheese steaks. This was unlike anything I have ever had. SOOOO GOOOOOOD!! Secret ingredient? Cheeze Whiz.
We headed to Washington DC the next day. As we passed Baltimore, Jeff looked up the top 10 crab cakes in town, and we tried the #1 place. They were good – very little filler and a TON of crab meat. This is totally turning into a foodie trip!
DC here we come!
