Anniversary Trip | Day Three

We left the wonderland of Hershey today. I did have one funny story about Hershey that I forgot to add yesterday. When we were getting out of the car to go to the park, we were watching all the "locals" getting out and putting on their hats, golves, scarves and coats. Travis and I couldn't decide how much we should put on. We both had on layers, so we kept going back and forth on whether or not we needed coats, hats, etc. Finally, I decided that my thick sweater (with a long shirt under it) would be enough to keep me warm. When I got out of the car a man turned to his family and said, "See, she's from Maine. She only needs to wear a sweater!" I laughed and said, "Actually, I'm from Dallas. Our rental car is from Maine. We've been watching you and trying to decide if we needed a coat!" It just made me laugh because they were watching to see how many layers we put on because they thought we were from Maine.

So, back to today. We headed towards Philly, but we took the scenic route. We went through Amish country. This part of Pennsylvania is very beautiful. We saw a lot of laundry hanging outside houses; some of the houses were very beautiful. One wouldn't expect to see laundry hanging in the front yard.

We stopped at an Amish Village (very touristy) and passed a man on a buggy, a boy on a skate/bike and a school with Amish kids (see pictures below).

Next we went to Valley Forge and visited the Washington Memorial Chapel. We also went to a used bookstore behind the chapel. I bought two really old books and a book on CD (The Dip by Seth Godin) all for only $6!

Next we went to the Valley Forge Visitor Center and watched a (boring) movie about the revolutionary war in the winter (yawn!). We then drove around Valley Forge, but some of the really good parts we wanted to see were closed for restoration.

Then we made our way into Philly. Right before we got to the heart of the city, we stopped to get gas. An older lady stopped Travis and asked him for directions to The Full Moon Saloon (I'll get back to that in a minute). It's so funny, because we've had at least three people stop us to ask for directions. I guess we look like we know where we're going.

We got to the city. I love Philly. It's a beautiful city full of all kinds of amazing architecture. There's so much history here. There's such a great feeling in this city. We asked our concierge for a good local place to eat. He recommended Portofino (Italian). It was really good. I really wish I had taken my camera. It was a really cool restaurant. The manager was so friendly. He was from Jersey. The owner even came over and gave us his business card and talked to us for a while. He had a very thick Italian accent ... he kinda reminded me of a "godfather" type of guy. They gave us a free dessert with a candle on it for our anniversary. It was very special.

After we were finished eating, we asked one of the waiters if there were any fun places to go on a Monday night. After telling us about every club in the city (man, did he know Philly or what??), we asked him about the The Full Moon Saloon. We had just happened to pass it on the way to the restaurant. Well, he looked at us like we were from Mars. He said, "That's a gay bar! Do you really want to go there?" We just laughed! We told him about the older lady asking for directions to the place. Needless to say, we did not go to the Full Moon Saloon!

We left and started to walk back to the hotel to get our car and stopped at Starbucks and walked through Macy's. We ended the evening by driving around the city in the rain listening to jazz music. It was a perfect ending to a perfect day.

Oh - and we love our hotel (HUGE jacuzzi tub--enough said!) and this area so much that we've decided to stay here an extra night instead of staying in DC. We'll just go to DC on Wednesday. I'll have to post pictures of the view from our hotel suite tomorrow. We have a view on three sides. Our suite just might be larger than our apartment!

Tomorrow is our actual anniversary and we're going to dinner on a boat! I'll blog more tomorrow.

(For all the pictures, check out my facebook page.)