Sarah and Oscar's Excellent Roadtrip! Day 7

Day Seven - Virtue, Liberty, and Independence...and Cheesesteak

Today we continued the whirlwind tour of cool places in American History, Philadelphia style. Our hostess sent us downtown armed with a phenomenal guide book and a couple of directions on must sees. We took it from there. After a quick breakfast, we hopped a bus for our first stop - The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Did we want to see classic works of art??? No! We had enough of that at the Art Museum in Ann Arbor. We came for one reason and one reason only...



Oscar said, "If I were real and weren't wearing a cassock, I could totally beat you up there." I said, "you're probably right!"

Here's a shot of Oscar and Rocky:



We then took advantage of the gorgeous day and walked from there back to the city center and into the Old City (where all the cool historic things are). We stopped a few places along the way for photo ops. We particularly loved "Love Park". Oscar says, "Love thy neighbor...and everyone else for that matter!"



We lucked out once again upon arriving to the Old City. I tried to get tickets for the Independence Hall tour, but they had already distributed all of the tickets for the day. But about 30 seconds later, they had to release a bunch of them because someone had reserved them and did not pick them up. Aw shucks! Your loss is my gain, thankyouverymuch! So, we got to tour historic Independence Hall. Here is a shot of the Assembly Room where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were signed:

We then headed across the street to see the Liberty Bell. This is a very blurry picture. It was quite difficult to get a shot of Oscar and the bell without all sorts of people getting in our way. Apparently some people think it's strange that I want to take a picture of a picture. Sheesh!

However, other people were completely charmed by taking a picture with a picture. This gentlemen, for instance. I think he is supposed to be Ben Franklin. He giggled at my request, but obliged willingly.

And this gentleman was intrigued and delighted as well. Apparently his job is to sit on this bench for 5 hours a day and tell people stories for free. What an amazing job! I want to do that! We sat together for a long while and shared stories before I headed out for other adventures.

The last adventure on our to do list today was to get a Philly Cheese Steak. I have heard many suggestions on where I should go, but most of them ended with me going to Pat's or Geno's. Conveniently they are located across the street from one another. And from the direction I was walking, Geno's came first. So they won.

I won't lie. I wasn't completely impressed! I would prefer a sloppy roast beef po boy or an Italian Beef. But, all in all, not a bad sandwich. I guess I'm just spoiled when it comes to food, and beef sandwiches in particular!

After all that walking and eating, we were wiped. We came back to Jessica's. Here's a shot of her with Oscar. After chatting for a bit, I took a major nap. That is perhaps one reason why we are up at nearly 2 AM posting this blog. The other reason though is that I got to participate in a totally cool Jewish holiday with Jessica. Apparently it's "Study the Torah all night long" night. There was a really cool Hebrew word that is the proper name for the holiday, but I don't remember it and Jessica already went to bed. So, anyway, we put in a solid 2 hours of Torah study before we called it a night. The others will go on for hours.

As for me, I suppose I should finally call it a night. Tomorrow, driving to NYC!!!