Thank you Philadelphia!

  

Today, is my last day in Philly. Im spending it packing since we've managed to accumulate a lot of stuff in three months. We have even already shipped 3 boxes of stuff back too!!

This trip, although had its hard times, was well worth it and I'm so glad we did it. So this post will be about my favorite things about Phillly, and of course, the things I look forward to coming home to!

Since being here, and knowing it was a temporary thing, I haven't made a huge effort to meet people in the city. A friendship takes a lot of work and traveling was enough work as it is. So I was pretty lonely while Cole was working. But on the weekends we had a great time. I will not leave Philadelphia thinking "thank heavens! That city was awful!". Not at all, I am leaving Philly knowing it is a great city, with a lot of great memories. I would be happy to visit again in the future, and would encourage anyone who was interested in history, to visit as well. 

Enough of that, on to the good stuff!!

First and foremost, my favortie thing about being in Philadelphia is the history here. Growing up on the west coast, the US history is limited. Here, its unbelievable! To walk in the streets that Benjamin Franklin and George Washington did feels nice! To picture the people that shaped our country going to church at the Christ Church or creating the declartion of indepenance under the roof of the old state house (Independance Hall) is surreal! I haven't taken a US history class in many years so I was a little rusty on some of the things that went on, but getting the refresher was even better when you can see where and how things happened. 

Liberty Bell

Christ Church

Secondly, the weather has been fantastic while we were here! Very hott and sunny most days! But when it was raining, it was like a downpour and it was fun to watch from our apartment. 

Thirdly, our apartment. It's a little outdated, but large! We were on the 23rd floor and overlooked Love Park. Every morning I could see the sun rising from the Benjamin Franklin Bridge! It was two bedroom, two bathroom and a pull out couch. so we could easily accomidate guests! (and Elyse had her own room!)

Here's the view from our bedroom window

Here's the view from our balcony

Third, I loved living in a city and walking! Even more than that, I love the sweets everywhere! unfortunately, they loved me back....

Lastly, I loved taking the train and traveling everywhere so easily! New York, Boston, New Jersey, Washington DC, Gettysburg. All places I wanted to go and never did. Now I can just go back and visit!! 

The thing I look forward to coming back to Seattle??

1. My dogs. I have already said how much I miss them, so I won't go into detail again. But our family doesn't feel whole without them. Also Elyse's favorite word is dog now. She sees a dog and the whole family says "dog! dog!" She is also starting to bark like a dog. I don't think that counts as words though. Cole believes that she doesn't even know she has dogs , but either way she will be happy to see them. 

2. doing laundry in my underwear. Unfortunately, this great apartment doesn't have a washing machine!! so we have to pay $2 a load to wash and another $2 for dry. I know some people are used to that, but not I. I did it in college and that was it. I enjoy not worrying about someone touching my clothes or getting my clothes out of the way fast enough from some one else to use the machine. Or worrying about my key not working when I try to get back in my room. (we had though cards that demagnetize easily). 

3. My friends. I miss talking to people, in person. Not on facetime or via email. Although email is nice because you can say everything you want to say.. then they say everything they want to say. So I like email, but I miss the face to face honesty too. :(

4. Lastly, I miss my stuff. My cookware, my bed, my kitchen, my closet, and my car!!! I have barely driven a car since Ive been here. I am a little afraid of city driving here and we also only have one car and cole needs it for work. SO, I've probably gotten behind the while for like 4 hours total. Okay maybe 6 hours, but that includes me helping Cole drive back from Boston. 

I've also realized, I have WAY too much stuff at my house that I don't need because clearly, we live three months without it. So I will be doing some "fall cleaning" when I get home.  We actually haven't really been home since the beginning of June, so we've gone longer without need some of that stuff! haha

So now that the trip is over, I look forward to restarting our lives back in Issaquah :) Love you Philly!! Thank you for the amazing time that we'll never forget :)

 

Big Bus Tour - Philly

  

When Cole and I first arrived in Philadelphia, we knew we would be here for two months, later finding out it would be three. One of the things we knew we should do is purchase a city pass. The city pass was about $70 each, not including Elyse, and granted you admission to a variety of places in Philadelphia. I know Seattle has one as well so it was something we already knew about. It was a good investment because we went to every single place the pass allowed, even the places it only gave us a $2 discount. The places included:

 the Please Touch Museum 

Eastern State Penitentiary

Academy of Natural Science

The Consitiution Center

The Philadelphia Zoo

The Adventure Aquarium

The Franklin Insitute

Last but not least, the Big Bus Tour. We waited on going on the BBT because we didn't think Elyse would be able to handle a 90 bus ride. But after doing the tour we wished had done it first to learn about everything and extra tid bits of places to visit. But we are glad we did it. Elyse did just fine and we got to sit on the top on a nice and sunny day. 

We learned a few facts that I wanted to share. Of course it was really hard to take a picture and take notes, so the bext I could do was to take the picture, and quickly upload it to instagram so that I could write a caption. That way I wouldn't forget what was so interesting!! (thats what the iphone needs, a place you can add a caption to your photos right away) There are a lot of places we already visited and posted about so I tried to only take photos of the facts we just learned. 

One of the first stops was on Race Street. The streets were named with numbers north and south and trees or things in Nature from east and west. Although race street had a different name before, but races occured on the street which made it named Race street. There is also no 1st street since William Penn was a Quaker and to the Quakers believed that the number 1 had to do with God and that they shouldn't make anything equal to God. Some examples of streets named after trees or things in nature are "Locust street, Chestnut Street, Walnut Street." 

Below is a picture of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. It was painted blue and now (as the tour guide claims)the philadelphians claim it as the longest blue suspension bridge in the world :) 

Since Benjamin Franklin was clearly the most famous resident here in philadelphia there are so many statues of him and places named after him around the city. This one was interesting since one of the things he is famous for was his  lightening  experiment with the key and the kite.  There are a few statues showing a  kite, lightening rod and a key. This  picture of a  bust of Ben was particularly interesting because it is completely made of keys! Its  hard to tell from the picture, but up close you can see the keys very well!

Since I was trying to type that caption I missed taking a picture of Ben at the fire station with a fireman's hat on! The reason for that is that he was a big advocate to advance the fire fighting ablities in Philadelphia. 

Above is a picture of the Philadelphia police headquarters. The building was made to look like handcuffs from up above. 

below is a picture I found off the internet of the building from above. I think they missed the mark a little, but good effort! looks like a phone to me. The tour guide thought it looked like a coffee cup and two donuts.

On our way to Chinatown, we could see the Comcast Center. Its' the tallest building in Philly. You can see it straight ahead in the picture below. Our apartment is the building right next to the Comcast Center, but its small so you can't see it from the picture. The tour guide asked us "what new technology was the building shape built after?". Turns out, its a flash drive, or jump drive. Pretty neat! 

Here is the friendship gate in Phillly. I feel like I see one at every chinatown I've ever seen. But the TG tells us that this one is particularly unique because there are no bolts or screws. It supports itself simply by its own weight. Also the read paint on it is dyed in boars blood.

We came to this one stop light near the reading terminal for a long time so I took a photo of this clock that I liked. But behind it (not pictured) is Philly's Hard Rock Cafe. The TG noted 3 things about it. (I didn't know there were things to know about the HRC) 1. It has the second largest HRC guitar in front of it, with Vegas having the first. 2. Every HRC has a burger or sandwhich in it to try to mimic a famous food from the area, and the one in this one has a Philly cheesesteak type burger with provelone,  and sweet peppers. Even though traditionally the cheesesteak is with cheese wiz. 

Also in Philly you don't call it a Philly cheesesteak, it's just a cheesesteak.

If I hadn't mentioned it before, Reading Terminal used to be a large train station, but now is an indoor market with lots of cheesesteaks and amish food. Also a train stop in the game Monopoly. 

This was a hard picture to get because I was on the otherside of the bus, but this is a statue in front of the Rodin Museum. It is the statue of the Thinker. Behind him, is also by Rodin called the Gates of Hell. I guess people always wonder what the thinker is thinking. Turns out (according to the TG) a speculation is that the thinker was made after one of the parts of the gates of hell, so the thinker is thinking about hell. You can't really see the Gates of Hell in this picture(its past the gate you see). The gates of hell in Philly is one of 3 originals. The Thinker is a cast of many around the world. 

So I kind of forgot what this mansion is called but it was in the sixth sense. M Night Shyamalan was from the Philadelphia area and shoots a lot of his films here. 

Lastly, here is City Hall. I've taken SO many pictures of city hall because it is near Love Park(you can see the top of the fountain in the picture) and our apartment is next to Love Park. On the top of city hall is a statue of William Penn the founder of Philadelphia. This is the largest masonic building in the world. Which means instead of steel, it is made of granite, marble and limestone. It was once the tallest inhabitable building in the world, but for a short time. It was suppose to be the tallest building in Philadelphia so that William Penn was always the highest point in the city. 

The TG told us a fun story about this though. I don't know of the truth behind it, but its fun anyways. 

This was the tallest building in Philly for the longest time until the One Libery Place was built which is the really pointy one in the Philadelphia skyline. This started what the TG called "William Penn's curse"! Which was believe that Willliam Penn was very angry with the people of philadelphia for not withholding the gentelman's agreement that no building would be taller than City Hall. 

One liberty place was completed in 1987. Before then all the Philadelphia sports teams were winning sports chamionships. (Phillies, Flyers, Eagles and 76ers. After one liberty place was up, all of the teams didn't do as well and continued to have bad luck winning a chamionship. But once the Comcast center was built in 2007, the workers affixed a small statuette to the final beam of the building. Making William Penn, once again, the highest point of Philadelphia. A year and a half later, the Phillies won the World Series. There is more about it on wikipedia if you are curious. 

Since the public can't go up the building this is a picture I also had to take from the internet. But this is apprently a picture of the statuette in the comcast building.

Ok, well that was a lot of info!!

Happy Birthday Coulston!

  So a few weeks ago was our anniversary and I did an entry on how amazing my husband is. But, today is his birthday, so I want to say how amazing he is again!!! But I'll keep it short and make this entry more of a photo entry of my man :)

He is really amazing and humble and I can't picture my life without him. He gave me a beautiful daughter and a wonderful life and I am so grateful. Happy Birthday Honey!! I love you with all my heart!

Our first picture together - Seafair August 2006

One of our many boating trips - Seafair 2007

Seahawks game! Our yearly tradition

Valentine's day 2008

St Patrick's Day in New Orleans - 2008

Our First vacation to Kauai - 2009 (and many more to follow)

Braces!!!! 2009

Honeymoon, London Tea Time at Harrods - 2010

Being an amazing new father - Feeding preemie Elyse

Hanging with baby at the state fair - 2011

Cole and all his little babies - 2012

Elyse's Birthday- 2012

Philly 2012

And of course a fun one!!

HAHA

And lastly, his birthday present from Elyse - Pug shirt and pug boxerbriefs 

Sesame Place

 

 This friday we are leaving Philly. So last week, we started our process of cleaning the apartment of unwanted things. As we were doing it, we found a stack of brochures I grabbed when we first got here. (almsot 3 months ago) In there were plenty of things we had accomplished seeing and some we didn't. One thing I saw was a brochure for Sesame Place! When I first picked up this brochuce in August, I didn't think twice about it. It was out of the question since Elyse didn't watch TV and still a fairly new walker so a water park didn't sound like a good idea. 

But now, Elyse will notice the TV and mostly so when the Cat in the Hat is on or Sesame Street. Although she is still unable to sit through a whole episode of anything, she is starting to become familar with the characters. One time when we were in Barnes and Noble, she saw the Cat in the Hat book and screamed with excitment, which I can only assume is because she reconized him from the show.

When we rediscovered the Sesame Place brochure, it was worth a second look.

Turns out, its mostly a water park but they change it in the fall for halloween and turn off all the water rides. It has regular rides too and the whole park is aimed for toddlers and young childern. So its small for their little legs and tons of places for them to play. We knew that Elyse would mostly enjoy just staring at the other kids. It's also the only theme park in the nation that is Sesame Street themed. Although I would say it would be more enjoyable if she was about a year older, it was still a good way to get out of the house and do something different. Sometime Cole and I hadn't been to either which made it kind of worth it. 

It wasn't cheap though, so I would recommend if you have a young toddler or baby to go in the fall/winter. During this time, they are only open on the weekends and you can buy the tickets online for $20 less per ticket. The regular price was $59 per person(ages 2-up) but if you pay the full price I believe its good for 2 days. (although its such a small place I don't see why you would need 2 days unless its for the water rides.)

So we had $20 off per person and paid $79 after taxes for both of us. Yes, thats still pricey, but it was worth it for us. It's unlikely we will ever go back since we don't live out there and it not worth traveling from Seattle to go there. It's not as big as disneyland. Plus since we've lived here for 3 months, we've seen as much as we want to over here.

Although, if we happen to be in the area when our family is a little older, then we would go again for their enjoyment. 

All in all, We were there for about 5 hours and I think Elyse was pooped but really enjoyed herself. I think she liked seeing all the kids and the characters. I think she REALLY enjoyed the parade towards the end of our visit and got to see all the characters on Sesame Street. The only things I wish I had done differently is I wish I would have dressed her up in her costume!!!

They had booths for trick or treating

This was the only ride we went on due to the lines and lack of interest. But she seemed happy with it!

Rubber ducky game - winner everytime!!

More trick or treating

In Count's unhaunted house! She loved the buttons

In Abby's magical maze - E is clearly flirting with the boy next to her 

umm... forgot what these are called. But I think they are Abby's fairy friends?

The Elmo Ride!

Can you tell me how to get, how to get to SESAME STREET! - go to Sesame Street is now marked off the bucket list haha

Although Cookie has always been my favorite character, Elyse went for teh big bird doll, so we got her that instead. I like cookie cause he enjoyes eating like I do :)

Parade pictures - Big Bird

Abby

Burt and Ernie

Oscar

Elmo and... I don't know who that is..

COOKIE!!

The Count

Someone won't look at me cause she's afraid to miss the action.

To end our wonderful day, we went to a restaurant we had been wanting to try since we got here called Parc. A nice french restaurant that had this cute high chair! Cole got the duck and Elyse loved it. Expensive taste!

Sunday we finally did the Big Bus tour of Philly and learned a few things we wish we had known when we got here! But I'll save that for tomorrow :)