Philly was another one of my sporadic weekend trips to the U.S. Even though it wasn’t our main destination, there was so much the city had to offer. Of course, if I had done proper research prior to going, I might have actually gotten a better idea of all its attractions and historic significance. However, I was perfectly fine discovering those on my own. =P

Friday morning we took off for the airport. As luck would have it, the taxi I ordered never came, so I had to frantically call for another cab. Check-in was fine, however since they’re starting to automate everything at U.S. customs, it meant we had to use the self service machines for the preliminary check. For some reason when they took my photo, it didn’t offer a countdown (or a re-take for the matter), so when the photo snapped, I was halfway through taking off my glasses. Needless to say I got a big ‘X’ across my photo and I had wait in a separate line to see a customs officer.

Luckily the rest of it went smoothly. We sat in the Maple Leaf lounge prior to take off. Even though I had to pay an extra $15, it was well worth it cause our flight ended up being delayed by two hours. At least we were comfy inside the lounge while we waited!

After the two hour delay we were finally off. Getting into Philly was a breeze. Since we missed lunch, our first order of business after we left the Market East station was to walk over next door – Reading Terminal. Reading is similar to Granville Island in Vancouver, where there’s lots of vendors selling a variety of food. My sis got her first cheese steak, while I decided to go for my second Thanksgiving dinner. I accidentally deleted the photo before I dug in, so I only have a half eaten photo of my turkey.

We had to reorganize our plans afterwards since we lost two hours. We ended up scrapping our visit to the Eastern State Penitentiary and decided to take the double-decker bus tour straight to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. After dropping off our luggage at the hotel, we made our way to the Independence Visitor Center to exchange our City Passes, then we were off. 

The bus tour was actually quite fun and informative. I made a mental list of places I wanted to visit on my own. The ride to the museum took 30 minutes, although the full tour would have been closer to an hour. Once we arrived we took photos of the outside sculpture garden, then made our way to the second floor to start the galleries. The museum itself is fairly big and we didn’t quite manage to finish the second floor before it closed. Luckily we still had plenty of time to browse through the collection in the ground floor before all the galleries closed for the night. The museum also offers live music on Friday nights, so we caught a bit of the performance before we headed out. Of course we didn’t forget to take a photo by the Rocky stairs before leaving. =P

After we left the museum, we took a bus over to Macy’s and spent some time shopping inside. There wasn’t really much to buy, but we did see the famous Wanamaker organ (although the pipes were covered by all the Christmas decorations). Apparently it is the largest operational pipe organ in the world. 

For dinner that night we headed over to Chinatown to try Penang, which is a Malaysian/Singaporean restaurant. I’m pretty sure it’s the most popular restaurant in all of Chinatown because it was packed when we got in. We ordered their roti canai, prawn mee and Hainanese chicken. The first two were awesome, but the Hainanese chicken was a little questionable. For dessert we had their peanut pancake. The peanut filling actually had corn inside, which was a first for me. However it was surprisingly good. For two people, dinner only cost $30, so it was definitely worth it.

After a super long first day in Philly, it was finally time to call it a night. Historical tour begins the next day. =)