2 Redheads, Breakfast, Wild Animals & a Lot of Walking

Hey guys!! I'm blogging via free wi-fi from King of Prussia, PA. Gotta love technology! We had a great day today. We started out the morning with breakfast near the Univ of Penn with Shore Turtle & his wife Redheaded Fan Girl. We ate at a really cool cereal place where you can either make your own combo or go with a pre-set themed combo. Since they're the cereal ppl we went with a pre-designed meal which I was VERY pleased with (it was something peanut-buttery with some Cap'n Crunch, bananas, raisins, & chocolate). We had a GREAT time getting to know people we sort-of feel like we already know pretty well through the 'net. It's pretty crazy that you know so much about someone you've never met. Anyway, we had a blast and wish they lived closer.

From there we headed towards the Philadelphia Art Museum to see the famed Rocky Stairs. ST & RFG had given us the heads up on a popular path runners & cyclists take next to the river so we found that and walked to the PAM. I have never seen so many runners (in a non-organized race) EVER! It was so cool. I felt like such a loser being a 'walker'. If there had been a running store along the path I would've ditched my sweater and jeans and joined in. I wanted to shout at all of them going by "I'm a runner, check out my calves people!! Wanna see my nasty looking feet?" When we got to the PAM everyone was doing the Rocky thing & running up the stairs and doing the raised arm pose. I decided to do more of a European/YMCA pose. Brent is more of the "I'm not going to pose at all pose". The view from the PAM of the city was definitely worth the walk. Since we were already in the Zoo neighborhood & the park area was so beautiful we decided to go ahead and check out the Zoo. The Philly zoo was the nation's first zoo, and some of the exhibits and buildings make that statement pretty easy to believe. They are trying to make the habitats a little more "authentic" though so I think in a few years it will have lost some of the "animals stuck behind bars" look. They have penguins, polar bears, monkeys, pretty much all of the standard zoo fare.

After walking so much that morning we were ready to take a train back to downtown and revisit some of the buildings we had seen the night before. We had no clue where a train station might be, and all of the travel books are crap. Subway maps are really only helpful when you know what street they're located on to begin with. There was a trolley stop right outside the zoo so we figured that would at least take us towards downtown. When we got on the trolley the rude ass driver asked us where we were going, we told him we didn't know but we wanted to get downtown. He told us the train didn't go there and we needed to go ??? (basically walk 2 blocks this way then 3 blocks that way blah blah blah - it might as well have been French). He said something about how the train did go to Broad so we said fine, we'll go there. Insert some more drama about exact change, a train full of scary looking people and then us getting off in the middle of the ghetto. Growing up in the ghetto it doesn't REALLY bother me, but being lost in an unfamiliar ghetto is not as comforting. We quickly walked quite a way towards the tall buildings of downtown and headed for Jim's Cheesesteaks, which according to Frommer's maps is located at 15th & Locust. But it's not. It's actually at 4th & South Street. I hate you Mr Frommer. We walked a REALLY long way and were VERY hungry. A million miles later we were at Jim's. Just in time to stand in a long line for a cheesesteak. All the cheesesteaks I've ever had are REALLY greasy and end with me in the bathroom for hours. I'm delighted to say this one was not. (Of course after walking for hours and hours it could have been 3 day old bread with ants on it and I would have eaten it.)

Afterwards we headed back up 4th and enjoyed some of the Revolutionary era buildings and Liberty Bell stuff we had seen the night before. We took some pics, overheard some park rangers talking about a crackhead running over a kid with his bicycle and headed back to the train station. We rode back out to where our car was and headed out for tonight's stop. We were SO tired and the directions provided by this hotel were CRAP. We got lost, ended up back on the turnpike, went in circles for an hour around the nation's 2nd largest mall and ultimately called the hotel to be put on eternal hold while I'm roaming. I hung up and we went in a shop where they pulled out a Yellow Pages map and helped us figure out how to get to this well hidden hotel. The guy was not sympathetic as we're about the 3rd person TONIGHT who has called lost and not the first who hung up on his eternal hold. We got settled in, took a swim in the indoor pool for a few minutes and then headed over to Bennigans for dinner. To be such a large mall there's not a single non-national restaurant chain around it! We asked about good Mexican food and he recommended Baja Fresh which is on just about every street corner across the US.

Tomorrow we're going to Valley Forge, Hershey & Gettysburg. Tomorrow night is the only night we don't have a pre-booked hotel because I wasn't really sure how long all that stuff could take, so we may stay in Gettysburg, Wilmington, DE or possibly even Jersey. See ya!!

Exercise -
Sunday - I walked 500 miles.