Day 8

Happy Birthday America!!! Today is the 4th of July and as promised I took Terri via the train into Philadelphia for the day. We started our day at the Paoli train station. I'd like to accurately describe the bathrooms, but modern technology has not yet made it possible to convey smell across the internet. We arrived in Philly just in time to see some of the 4th of July parade. We got to see the Sister Sledge on a float singing their best known song "We Are Family". That was neat. I had told Terri that I wanted us to eat at the City Tavern. It is a historic restraint that was built in 1772-73. It was the unofficial meeting place of the Continental Congress. We began walking along side the parade and keeping pace with the Sister Sledge float. Ten blocks of hearing the course to We Are Family is enough to make you want to stab out your eyes with a dull object. We arrived at the City Tavern just in time to keep us from dying form heat stroke. It was so hot and so humid that I am not ashamed to say that Terri and I all but laid atop the air conditioning vent that was placed below our table. If you are ever in Philadelphia, I highly recommend eating at the City Tavern. The staff dress in Early American attire, the decor is period and the food is amazing. We dined on bacon wrapped shrimp, corn chowder, traditional turkey pot pie and 4 different kinds of homemade bread. We washed it down with a drink called Shrub. It was fruit preserve water combined with champagne and chilled to create a very refreshing drink It was an amazing meal. Terri and I could not put it off any longer. We knew that we had to brave the heat again. We staggered out into the thick HOT air. We continued on to a museum called Ben Franklins Court. This is supposed one of Philadelphia's best kept secrets. Terri was so pumped to see it but of course it was closed for renovations. We went to the Betsy Ross house, but since we had both been there, we did not want to wait in line to see it. We went to the oldest residential street called Elfreth's Alley but the museum was closed due to the heat. On our way back to the train station we did manage to find a geocache (see the video). All in all our day was fun. We laughed a lot even though we were so miserable from the heat, and we did manage to run into some occupy Philadelphia protesters. Again, the ability to translate smell would have done wonder. I am glad we did this. Terri wanted to be able to say she was in Philly 4th of July and now she can cross it off her bucket list.