Day 4: Philadelphia - Touring Philly

On Monday (April 19th) Jackie had to go to work which left me alone until about 5PM.  I had decided to walk around Philly taking photos and doing the touristy thing.  All throughout the weekend I've been taking photos non-stop and I felt bad for making her constantly wait, quietly with no complaint, for me as I took my pictures.  This was a great opportunity for me to leisurely take photos of the beautiful sights I had seen while driving around.. not to mention getting some form of exercise in.

Since I was going to be out and about all by myself Jackie took it upon herself to draw me a map of the places I wanted to go.  "It's not to scale," Jackie said as she sketched it out.  I essentially was making a big box starting from "home", getting some coffee, to the Liberty Bell, to the famous "Love" park, then a bite to eat.

First stop.. some coffee.

Very cute coffee place right down the street from Jackie's apartment.  I sat and enjoyed my biscotti and coffee out in the gorgeous day.  By the time I got my coffee it was around 11 o'clock.  It wasn't the plan to go out so late but hey... it's a vacation.  

Philly is a beautiful city.  So much history... I could see and feel it in the city as I walked around.

Maybe it's living in Orange County pretty much all my life but I don't think I've really been exposed to a place with so much history in the United States before.  Even some of the run-down rusty buildings gave the city so much character.  It seemed like all the buildings had gorgeous columns with detailed statues.

This was especially true of City Hall.

This was the day I really wish I had a different lens.  It was hard to try and grasp the beauty of everything I was seeing with a lens that limited the photos I wanted to take because everything looked so up close.  But I still managed to capture the essence of what I was seeing.

Half the time I didn't even know what I was looking at.  I just kept taking photos.

There were these plaques all over the city explaining different bits of historic information which helped.

City Hall was actually the third stop after coffee.  The first was the Liberty Bell.  Inside they had a long corridor with different facts and displays that had to do with the Liberty Bell.  One of which was this:

That particular section described how the Liberty Bell was used on many products marking its significance in the area.  Leave it to a dessert freak like me to take photos of a butter wrapper... and nothing else.  Well, minus the actual Liberty Bell.

There were surprisingly a lot of people there considering it was a Monday.

My last stop before lunch was the Love Park.

It was gorgeous there.  I hadn't realized that this was even in Philly.  For some reason I thought it was in New York.  I also didn't realize there was a huge fountain right behind the sign as well.  Taking photos were actually a little difficult with the wind blowing all the water to my face.. and the camera.  Oh well... it's the price to pay for a great shot.