Philly by Mike

Bonjour folks. We are on the train to Montreal so thought I would use the time to catch up on a few legs of our trip for you. It was an early start this morning so tempers will no doubt be frayed before we reach our destination. I don't mind because that is the best time to do some teasing!
I think the last time I posted was our stay in Washington which seems an age ago now although was only 8 days previous. So the next stop for us was Philadelphia.
We left DC on the Northeast Regional AMTRAK train. This was our first experience with train travel and was only a short journey of about 90 mins. Union Station in Washington is very impressive. It puts our central stations back home to shame. Its certainly a good way to travel and would be even better if we weren't lugging around large bags with us. Lol is getting bigger muscles everyday and Mim hasn't fallen over her bags once yet!
The best part is always finding our digs once we arrive at the destination station. I like to use public transport which is an adventure with 6 people and luggage. We arrived at 30th St station and found our way to the subway - stairs without lifts causes some tantrums! Next challenge is working out what form of ticketing you need, subway lines, transfers and destination. Its all in the planning folks and I had done my research for each city. My job was transportation!
We were staying in South Philly and caught the subway to city hall and transferred to the north/south line and got off Lombard St and walked about half doz blocks avoiding ice where possible. Arrived without any mishaps and then carted all the bags up 3 flights of stairs in the guesthouse we were staying. Still having fun even though the men do most of the heavy lifting. The best is yet to come in Boston which is a 5 story walkup!!
Lisa is going to send all our Philly pics in a separate blog.
Mooched about close by and headed to the Italian market on 9th St for a pizza and grocery shopping. Very authentic and I liked this place the best so far. The boys and I went into a bar for a drink the next night and the barman who looked after us was "Darrmonic" (Dominic) Deluca. The owner let Will sit up at the bar even though you have to be 21. He had a root beer which is sarsaparilla. Jen will be jealous as this street was the scene for the original Rocky movie when Sylvester Stallone was running through the streets. There is a picture over the bar.
We bought some items from the Mexican area next door to make dinner.
Next day I went for an early morning run - it doesn't get light until after 7am. Found the Schyukil river which runs through town and ran along there. Its good to get out early but the others don't agree!
Went to all the historic sites during the day which are all within walking distances, although I think the locals use public transport a lot more than walking even if it's only 1 or 2 stops away.
The city was the main centre of the revolutionary congress and was the largest US city up until early 1900s, so there is plenty of old sites to visit and we saw where they signed the Declaration of Independence which led to the war with the British and where the elected delegates convened for 4 months after the British surrendered to draft the Constitution. I like all the history and the Americans have lots of memorials, statues, parks etc commemorating events and people everywhere.
It would have been good to have one more day to look around but next stop was NYC so it was back to the train station the next day. I will post another blog or two about New York because there a few stories to tell about that city.
Mike.....