Matthew's visit- Philly edition

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, or if you know me at all, you know that I absolutely ADORE Philadelphia. It is an amazing city that offers all the convenience of urban living without the soaring prices of other nearby cities (NY and DC for example). It is a city of neighborhoods, with thriving artistic and cultural scenes. It is a city of diversity. If we decide to leave here at the end of Zack's schooling, I know I will really, really, really miss it.

One of our favorite things to do is share our Philly lovin' with others, so of course we devoted the bulk of Matthew's vacation to showing him around here. On day 2 of his visit (Assuming you don't count the day he flew here), we started out with the Liberty Bell,

Independence Hall,

and the Constitution Center. Don't the boys look just like George Washington?

Next we hopped a bus tour that took us around some of the other fabulous Philly sites. We saw Old City, including the oldest continuously inhabited street in the United States and a church where Ben Franklin and George Washington worshipped. We saw Chinatown, including the Friendship Gate, and we ate lunch at the bustling Reading (pronounced red-ing) Terminal Market (if you've seen National Treasure, that's the place where the lady goes and hides behind the meat counter to get away from the scary bald guy). We saw our lovely City Hall,

and the art museum (insert Rocky music here).

We drove down Broad Street, which has a lot of the theatres and concert halls, and we ended up on South Street, home to many unique shops.

Some highlights of the day: We had a lot of water ice. We watched a guy make an entire painting out of spray paint in a matter of minutes and it turned out pretty darn cool (looked something like the image below).

Some drunk guy came and chatted it up with us at a bus stop for several minutes. He kept spitting on me when he was talking.

That evening was the hockey game, and we watched the Flyers lose to the Montreal Canadiens.

Darn. Still fun though. After seeing so many lovely Philly sites, we decided to watch the Sixth Sense (filmed in Philly) and we picked out a lot of the sites we had seen. For example, we took this picture of the house where they filmed the birthday party scene.

All in all, a most excellent day.