Sightseeing in Philly

I’m (hopefully) back in the blogging swing of things!  I’ve processed most of my pictures from all my trips this past month, but haven’t been home enough to run them through Photoshop for my collages or had time to blog about them.  My goal is to get most of them done this weekend & finish my my recent Denver pictures on my flight to Chicago Monday and write out all the blogs on the plane.  I’ve got a few posts from my trip to Philadelphia in mid September to see my best friend Stephanie and to run the Rock n Roll Philadelphia Half-Marathon. It was a super quick weekend trip, where we mostly just relaxed and hung out- no big plans.  Arriving on Friday afternoon, we took her dog out for a walk & passed by this cool Irish Memorial at Penn’s Landing to all the immigrants.  It’s bigger than life-size and there is a whole little park dedicated to their story.

On another walk through town, we passed by the Painted Bride Art Center & I just adored how fun and colorful the exterior of the building was decorated.

Hubby and I had toured much of the historical district of Philadelphia last summer & it was so cool to be staying in the middle of everything on my last trip.  Right around the corner from her place is a small park just beside the famous Christ Church & it’s often used as a dog park since it is fenced on several sides.

Stephanie lives in the heart of Old City & is about a 2 minute walk to Penn’s Landing

The original Continental bar is one of many corner bars & restaurants just a few minutes from her place.  We’d been for drinks at the fancy new one after the marathon last November.

One of the other many benefits of downtown living is the great rooftop views- I’d be hanging out here all the time if I had such a great place.

Yup, I was running around like a fool taking tons of pictures and spying on people from above when they showed me to their roof and loved this shot of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

One of the other things that is great about Philly are the amazing murals everywhere.  This one was huge and it transitioned from a tile mosaic on the right end to completely painted on the left end.

We took a walk  down to Penn’s Landing on a cold & blustery morning and I was attracted to this old paddlewheel boat that does dinner cruises.

There are so many cool restaurants & we popped into this little underground fondue place called Beneluxx for snacks before our main dinner reservations. We sat at an old bar with so much character & too much history while I was amazed at the hundreds of beers they had on tap.

After the race, we grabbed a quick bit and a bottle of wine at this rooftop restaurant a block from Stephanie’s house.  It’s brand new & Google isn’t helping me with the name.  It was a perfect time of year to enjoy all the al fresco dining and enjoy the view of the beautiful trees in the park.

Finally, us world travelers (with our Tootsie’s shirt from Nashville and Florida hoodie) ended up dining on Tex-Mex in Philly- the irony wasn’t lost on us, but sometimes you just need chips & salsa to carb load for a race and a little frozen concoction to sip with your best friend.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: I am so excited about the new iPhone 4s- it is pretty awesome!