Philly

Right, I’ve got a minute. 

Having done our time in the Big Apple, we took another Amtrak train across to Philadelphia.  It’s a significant place in American history with plenty of monuments and plaques for various Founding Father types, but shockingly nothing for the Fresh Prince. Rocky has one or two, though.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of Philly; probably something like Chicago, bearing in mind it’s the sixth most populous city in the US.  What it actually is more ‘towny’, for want of a better adjective: a lot less in the way of tall buildings than the other major cities we’ve visited and a lot more spread out.  The feel of it is a bit like Charleston, and so was a definite change of pace from New York.

Den of sedition

Philly is where the Founding Fathers (or arch traitors, depending on your perspective) debated and wrote the Declaration of Independence and U.S Constitution.  It’s also the home to the Liberty Bell: an absolute dud we sold them (it broke as soon as they used it) that has had a lot more success as a metaphor.

No refunds

We were only there for a couple of days, so we got around the necessary things like the Hall of Independence and the aforementioned failed-bell, and we went on another walking tour with a local to point out the various less obvious places, like where the Founding Fathers kicked back, tied their cravats (or whatever 18th century shit they  wore) around their heads and drank unto oblivion:

It turns out the landlord was probably a spy too.  It’s poor form when you can’t trust the walls of the boozer to keep  all your delicious secret plans of revolution in confidence.

Ben Franklin features heavily.  He’s one of those guys I keep thinking I’m mistaking for someone else because he did everything: “Wait, was he the guy with the key in the kite or the bloke signed the Declaration of Independence? Was he first Yank ambassador to France or the guy that came up with Bifocals?”.
He was all that and more. He was the Swiss army knife of revolutionary agitants, and the burgeoning U.S were cosmically lucky to have him.

 
And they made a statue of him made of keys

We took a walk around Elfreth’s alley, which is preserved Terraced-street which was notable because its residents were split along Loyalist/Patriot lines.  It worked out a bit better for one of those groups, apparently: the resident Brit lover was hanged for collusion after we bailed.

   
Someone bet on the wrong horse

Otherwise, the waterfront is pretty and also has an interesting pair of battleships and a bonus sub.

  

We went to a couple of great restaurants but nothing quite beat the majesty of a legitimate Philly Cheese Steak:

Total artery carnage

We’ll have to go here again, as I didn’t get a chance to run up the steps from Rocky while meditating on the film’s timeless message about the merits of being hit in the head repeatedly and not falling over.

Oh, and we had a nice chat with our Hungarian Uber driver on the way to the station for our train to DC. Hi, Ferenc!

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Wir haben ein paar Tage in Philadelphia geblieben. Es ist interessant, die Heimat der amerikanischen Revolution zu sehen, auch wenn wir die Bösen sind.