Homeward Bound

After no time at all, we are already over halfway through the trip and are starting the long journey back to LA. Craziness. In our last day at Philly, we went over to Old City to visit some more historical sites. We went to Betsy Ross's old house, and then to Christ Church. Inside, we sat in the same pews that George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Betsy Ross sat in. Pretty cool stuff.  From there, we headed over to Elfreth Alley, which is boasted as the oldest residential street in the US. It was pretty cute. After that, we grabbed one more lunch with our buddy Tina before we headed out to Cleveland!


The journey was supposed to be about 7 hours, but it took about 10 hours thanks to a trip through Amish country where we got stuck in 1 lane traffic behind a horse drawn buggy. Combine that with a ton of road work, and we were wiped by the end of the day. We were planning on hitting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but read some sub par reviews online, so we decided to skip it. Its a good thing we kept that money too because it went to good use thanks to all the tolls we had to pay. We ended up paying about 22 bucks in tolls again!!! Come on north east wtf guys!  We got to the Chi Town area around 4 or so, and after braving city traffic for an hour and a half, we arrived at our hotel.  We grabbed some food and hit up a couple bars, and called it a night.  We are planning on taking an architectural tour tomorrow before getting some authentic deep dish Chicago Pizza. Can't wait. Thanks for reading.

The City of Brotherly Love

Our last day in NYC was spent grabbing brunch, walking through the botanical gardens, and then braving the traffic. We learned from our mistake on the last drive and looked up toll free routes to Philadelphia. After a short drive of only 2 hours, we were in The City of Brotherly Love and ready to explore! We dropped off our stuff at Christina's and let her study/attend Med School things while we went to The Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin's Grave, the US Mint, and the Constitution Center.

I love how close everything is! We were able to walk to all those sites and still meet up with Christina for dinner - an amazing chicken/veggie pizza.from Top Tomato. Instead of hitting the hopping Tuesday nightlife, we decided to stay in and catch up with Christina and play with their bunny.

The next morning, today, we got an early start and went to City Hall, Love Park, Ben Franklin Parkway (the American Champs-Elysees), and the Philadelphia Art Museum. The Art Museum is supposedly one of the best in the nation, but at $18/each we didn't venture in. We saw the best attractions for free - the Rocky statue and the stairway made famous from the films. We took a couple flip cam videos of our ascent up the stairs, and believe me we will be posting that soon!

After the museum we headed back to grab some famous Philly Cheesesteaks with Christina at Rick's Steaks. DELICIOUS! I don't know yet if they were better than the South Philly Exp food truck in LA though. Maybe I'll have to go back for further testing.

After lunch we meant to check out Old City with it's historic structures and oldest continuously inhabited street, but ended up napping instead. The heat and all the walking caught up with us! We're planning on hitting Old City tomorrow before we head out for Cleveland.

After our nap, we got to meet up with another USC friend who lives just a few blocks away from Christina. While making dinner plans, we discovered that every Wednesday in summer it's Center City Sips - Happy Hour deals from a slew of bars on food and drinks. We ended up hitting up Moriarty's Irish Pub for dinner and drinks with Clark and Christina. USC reunion!

The Med Students then left us to study and continue towards their dreams of saving lives, while KT and I stayed in the area to drink and take advantage of the CCS deal. We finished the night in Irish Pub, sadly not Paddy's Irish Pub from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and then came back to catch up on blogging and save pictures to my laptop. Once we have a faster connection, we'll upload photos and those videos. Stay tuned!

Stepping into the Past

For anyone who says America doesn’t have history the way Europe does, I recommend they come to New Orleans. I have been to a few cities on the East, but none of them felt like they had preserved their history as well as New Orleans, especially the French Quarter. I can’t imagine how amazing this city was before Katrina hit, because I was already impressed as is.

We started our last full day in “Nawlins” at Café Du Monde – famous for their Biegnets (fried dough covered in powdered sugar) and coffee. It was packed! I can’t imagine the line/wait on a Saturday when everyone comes out for brunch. The beignets were delicious, but very very messy! I’m glad KT warned me not to wear black, otherwise I would have looked even worse.

Once we cleaned ourselves off a bit, we did a walking tour that was in my Lonely Planet: USA & Canada on a Shoestring book. We walked around the French Quarter learning about the history and trying to survive the humidity. After walking by the old house of William Faulkner, the oldest surviving French Colonial Building, Ursaline Covenant, and more, we headed to the St. Louis Cemetary.

Because the watertable is so high in New Orleans, bodies don’t stay buried for long. Early settlers realized this after a few storms starting making the bodies resurface. So, they started making above ground cemetaries with vaults & masoleums. The only other cemetery I’ve been in like this was in France and architecturally they are very similar. A huge difference to me though was the skyline in the back. In Europe, it was like stepping into the past, but here it was nice to see the juxtaposition of the old and new.

After the cemetery it was too hot to keep sightseeing, so we just went back to Kenny’s place and played Mario Kart until the gang was ready to hit Bourbon Street for our last hurrah. Of course, just as we step outside a huge thunder/lightning storm starts. We waited it out and luckily it was all over after about 30 minutes. I’m so not used to rain like that! It came out of nowhere and just started pouring!

Bourbon St. was crazy and so much fun. It’s just bars and clubs for blocks down this one street. It was pretty busy, but definitely wasn’t packed since it’s the off season and it had just rained. I can only imagine how insane it gets during Mardi Gras and Spring Break.

After we got some drinks, including a Hand Grenade, we headed over to Frenchmen, which is a less touristy version of Bourbon. This street was even busier! I guess since there aren’t many tourists out now, it would make sense that the local bar area would be more lively. We wandered around there and eventually headed back. Overall, it was a great night and definitely a highlight of the trip.

New Orleans is so far my favorite city we’ve been to, but we have so much left it’ll be hard to stay at the top. The French Quarter was beautiful and quaint. While it’s a tourist attraction, it never felt like it was maintained for that purpose. I think I would have loved NOLA even more if it weren’t for that darn humidity! We usually could only hand a few hours of sightseeing before we had to head back to take a cold shower and bask in some air conditioning.

Today consisted of a 9 hour drive from NOLA to Bowling Green, Kentucky. We passed through Mississppi (where I was born!), Alabama, and Tennessee. That's 5 states in one day! We’re visiting KT’s brother for a couple days before we head over to Elvis Week in Memphis, TN. Apparently, there are usually around 100,000 people there for the event! It’s going to be madness, but I’m really looking forward to it.

Some Texas Hospitality

Our only full day in Dallas was spent visiting the 6th Floor Museum and experiencing some true Texan hospitality. The 6th floor museum is on the 6th floor of the building where Lee Harvey Oswald was when he shot JFK during his visit to Dallas in 1963. The museum was extremely well laid out, as it told a complete story, starting with JFK's campaign, and going through the assassination and onto the controversy and aftermath of the event. They also played videos throughout the floor that set up very well with building suspense and made it seem like a movie in itself. It was very eerie to see the window that Oswald was looking out, and to see his perspective of one of America's greatest tragedies. I would highly recommend the museum for anyone in Dallas who is even close to a history buff. Kristal and I both learned a lot of new things, the main one being that JFK made the Peace Corps. Neither one of us knew that. Overall, a great experience and the highlight of my early trip so far. Well until the next day.

The day was capped with a true family BBQ at Shayna's house. Filled to the brim with family and friends, we had some great home-cooked BBQ chicken, corn, and lots of desserts. While in the historic West End of Dallas, we found a great cookie shop and bought a dozen to contribute to the event. 

After leaving Dallas, Kristal and I stopped by the new Cowboys stadium in Arlington, and from the outside, it looked like the biggest stadium I have seen. And the inside didn't disappoint. After walking through the pro shop, we were able to walk into the stadium, where we got our first look at the one of a kind ridiculously huge jumbo tron. It extends from one 20 yard line all the way to the other, covering an absurd 80 yards. My favorite part of it were the regular sized jumbo trons that were on both endzone sides. While its designed for the endzone crowd to see the replays, I'm sure Jerry Jones wanted to show how large his new screen was in comparison.

After taking some photos, we went into the Cowboys locker room, where they let you try on the jersey, pads, and helmets of Tony Romo, Miles Austin, and Demarcus Ware. I was surprised to see that I actually fit pretty easily into Ware's pads, meaning we are similar size. Sadly, he is just a bit more athletic then me. After that, we went into the press room, followed by the Cowboy's cheerleader locker room. We decided to hang out on the field again after that, and even timed our runs of the 40 yard dash. Professional Football players speeds vary from 4.2 seconds for the top players and 5.2 for the heavy set offensive linemen. We ran it in....around 7 seconds. Yeah, I don't foresee a professional football career in either of our futures.

After that, our tour was done, which was unfortunate cause I wanted to check out the fountain show that was on the 2nd floor. Overall, it truly is a one of a kind stadium, and one that I'm sure several stadiums will be modeled from down the line.

Lastly, we hit Austin this afternoon and immediately crashed for a couple hours. After that, we drove into downtown to the Congress Bridge, where at around 9 PM, a huge colony of bats is said to fly out at night. I was hoping for a huge cloud of them to come out all at once, but it ended up mainly being about 5-10 of them at a time. A little disappointing, but overall it was pretty cool. After that, we walked down to 6th street in the heart of downtown. It was fairly low key considering its a Monday in summer, but I can definitely see how it would be a great place to be on a Friday or Saturday night. We ended up at Darwin's pub, where we grabbed some Shwarmas and free soda, and played a few games of trivia. I ended up winning on the night, cause I'm totally smarter. (Kristal: Although, I placed 25th in the entire nation in one round, but whatever. no big) And that was it for our first night in Austin! Thanks for reading.