Philly Day 1

After all the traveling we did and the fun at the Flyers game, when we arrived back at our hotel and we were beat. We slept like babies as we prepped for exploring in Philly, especially Citizen Bank Ball Park.

Yup, we woke up and took the subway back down to the sports complex. AGAIN. But this day was about taking in everything we would have been doing in preparation for a Phillies World Series day. That was the original intent of the trip anyway.

As you can tell, the skies were grey and the roads were wet but that didn't stop us from taking in all the great Phillies culture.

A 3rd base fave

It's exceptionally difficult to find Phillies gear in our home town, Chicago, so to make up for it we spent 2+ hours in this Majestic Clubhouse Store.

My favorite part of the store was the MLB Pin Trading Center. Note to self, next time bring an old MLB pin.

After lots of shopping, we were starving so we stepped into the Irish pub that's attached to the ball park, ironically enough it was one of our Chicago favorites, McFaddens. Landon's favorite part? The Phillies tap as seen below.

Remember when I said we did some shopping? Check out the 2 bags the husb is holding below in the photo with Phillies mascot the Phanatic.

By the time we were ready to go it was pouring but we made our way to the subway and crossed lines to another subway so we could make it over to the historical area. Home of the Liberty Bell.

How many photos can one take of this bell? Over 40 according to my camera. I'll spare you most of them but while I was taking a photo, this guy jumped in. He gave me an idea.

See the husband and his new Shane Victorino Fly'n Hawaiian glove. Yes we did get funny looks when we took this photo. Maybe because the Phillies weren't playing? or Maybe because it was clear we were tourists?

Ok but for real, we did enjoy seeing the Liberty Bell.

The rest of the area was really beautiful, especially as the sun started coming out. The only bummer was that we left the Chicago construction to see the Philly historical construction. Major bummer.

Because we had spent so much time shopping for Phillies gear, we didn't get to take a tour of the National Constitution Center because they close at 5pm. Sad Trombone.

Philly Night 1

After all of our traveling was complete, we finally were in Philly. We checked into our hotel and asked the front desk staff what the easiest way to get down to the Wells Fargo Center. Can you guess their response? Subway.

The hubs and I quickly freshened up and made our way tot he Broadway stop on the Orange Line, where we made our way to the sports complex. Even though we were in another form of public transportation, we were excited to be en route to see some hockey.

When we got off the subway, it was quite a site. You could see the Spectrum, Citizen Bank Park, Lincoln Financial Field and the Wells Fargo Center, although it's very hard to capture in one photo.

Time for some Flyers hockey.

When we arrived we found out that the Flyers were honoring the late great Barry Ashbee by giving his family the old banner that once hung in the Spectrum.

The graphics were pretty cool, but they were no United Center.

We enjoyed watching a win, a few good fights and seeing a new arena.

By the time we made our way back to the hotel, we were pooped, but we had to take a minute to participate in the post game victory dance that are plastered to the ground throughout the subway stop.

Getting from Chi to NYC to Philly

Our Trip to Philly & NYC, was insane. We did have a lot of fun, but I figured before I get super excited for the fun stuff I should share that all fun comes with work. Things don't always go smoothly and I feel like people rarely mention the bad. So the negative first UP.

We originally only wanted to go to just Philly but we found super cheap flights to NYC. We figured we could use a lot of public transportation to get to Philly and make the flight to NYC work. Plus, I've never been to NYC so why not right? We had read some articles and talked to some people and it seemed like it was going to be easy enough.....and it was on the way home, but not so much on the way there.

The only bummer to the trip, the big bummer to the trip, was that we spent so much time in plains, trains and subways that the "relaxing" part of vacation was pretty much a wash. Case in point.

We started with a 7am flight out of Chicago (a flight out of Chicago almost always means a delayed flight). It was our first time using JetBlue and the hubs was exceptionally excited about all the leg room, the individual monitors, and the snacks.

Thank goodness for the comfort, because of high winds, we had a delay. BIG SURPRISE. We finally made it out of Chicago but we made it to JFK an hour late.

From JFK we asked the customer service desk how to get to get to the Jamaican Train Stop, they said to take the AirTrain and follow it to the Jamaican stop. Well, apparently, we were supposed to take the AirTrain we got on, to a different stop and then transfer to the Jamaican stop...oops. That caused a few more delays.

We finally made it to the station but we wasted some time trying to figure out the tickets for the AirTrain that we had already ridden (apparently you pay after?) and the tickets to board the Long Island Express (they are not the same ticket, I repeats they are not the same ticket). After the ticket situation was resolved, we boarded the 25 minute Long Island Express to Penn Station in NYC. Finally a little time to relax. WRONG.

Knowing that things always run later than expected and that we were flying out of Chicago, we booked our Amtrack Tickets for 2.5 hours later than we thought it would take based on all the research we had done. We were later than that.

When we got off at Penn Station, we had realized we needed to see if we could switch our Amtrack train to Philly for a later time. Hubs talked a  fantastic representative, Mary, about switching our tickets. All seemed well until the end of the conversation when she said these tickets cost more because we were buying them the day of. O'well, at this point we just really wanted to make it to Philly.

After the stress of exchanging our tickets was over, we realized that Penn Station was right below Madison Square Garden, we thought that was cool anyway.

After a quick bite to eat we took the 1.5hr Amtrack train into Philly.Once you get past some of the junk yards, there were some pretty sights, especially with the fall colors in full effect.

Finally we had arrived at the 30th St station, our hotel was only a cab away and then we could make our way to the Flyers game (which we had to take a subway too).

Does that amke you as tired as it did us? We were so exhausted that when we checked into our hotel, we were relieved to see 2 beds. At least we'd be getting some good rest post Flyers game.