Philadelphia

In the middle of all of our day trips to NYC, we decided to fit in a day trip to Philadelphia.

Last year I did a day trip on my own, but all I did was go to Iron Sport Gym in Glenolden to meet Steve Pulcinella, lift some weights, and the eat my fill of food back at 30th Street Station before heading back to NYC, so I never got to see any sights or explore anything else Philly has to offer.

Because we didn't try to book them in advance, Amtrak tickets were ridiculously expensive for just a daytrip, so we decided to take the scenic, more adventurous route: local trains.

The first train was from Stamford, Connecticut to Grand Central Station. We then took the subway shuttle across to Times Square/42nd St.

Then the 1 train downtown to Penn Station/34th St where we bought New Jersey Transit tickets to 30th Street Station, Philadelphia.

The next train got us all the way to Trenton, New Jersey, where we had to quickly swap onto a SEPTA train to go all the way to 30th Street Station.

Five trains, one way. On the upside, it was about half the price of Amtrak tickets, and only an extra 30-60 minutes of travel. It was also more fun ;)

30th Street Station is beautiful, and probably my favorite train station of the ones I've visited. It has a similar style to Grand Central, only with a lot less people running through it.

So we quickly grabbed a map and started walking down Market St towards the downtown area.

From there we bought tickets to a hop on hop off bus tour and made our way through a lot of Philly's history; the museums, the Rocky steps, old town Philadelphia and the Liberty Bell.

If there's anything that surprised me, it was old town Philly. The old style buildings were a sight worth seeing, as was hearing the history behind some of the plaques and markings on the buildings. It's a very pretty area to explore. And Benjamin Franklin had his hand in a lot of its history.

Unfortunately all the pictures are on my camera and not my phone, so I can't upload any here at the moment.

And of course, we stopped to chow down on some awesome Philly cheesesteaks at Carmen's Famous Italian Hoagies and Cheesesteaks in Reading Terminal Market before heading home, catching a local train back to 30th Street Station, and five more to get back to Norwalk.

So eleven trains, a bus tour and some Philly cheesesteaks later and we had experienced beautiful Philadelphia in one very long day.

As tired as we were, we had an early start the next morning for our overnight trip to Portland, Maine.