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June 17th, 2001: It was checkout day from Gaithersburg, MD to head on to Philadelphia for the second part of the Whirlwind tour. Philly kind of acted as a stopover, so to speak. We left Gaithersburg at 11 AM and eventually arrived in Philly at 3PM. In Philly, Mary and I stayed in a Courtyard that was miles ahead of the last one we stayed at. It was cleaner, nicer, and bigger. There was only one problem: no parking. Well, there WAS parking, but the garages wanted $20 a night! What's that about? Well, it turns out the lot behind the Courtyard was cheaper than having the valets park the car. The best part: no tip! We settled into our room and checked out what kind of sites we could see in the limited time we were in Philly. I had wanted to go to the Franklin Institute of Technology, but there was no time for that. Instead, we decided to head on over to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. I wanted to drive there, but Mary thought it would be easier to just walk there, like we haven't done ENOUGH walking on this trip... Mary had a fun idea for the whole family, though. Let's walk through the seediest part of Philadelphia!!! Man, and I thought NYC was bad. I almost feared for my life, but I calmed down as the walk progressed. We eventually made our way to Independence Hall. Now, the last time I was in Philadelphia, I was in 6th grade, so my memory of this place was slightly hazy. Mary and I took a lot of pictures of Independence Hall. We also waited on line to view the Liberty Bell. We entered and got the 5-minute speech the park ranger can probably say while getting tortured mercilessly (then again, repeating the same speech over and over and over again during the course of the day sounds pretty tortuous to me). While listening to the speech, all I could smell was body odor from the person in front of me. And being the sort of person I am, I can now only associate the Liberty Bell with the smell of BO. Isn't that horrible? Mary and I snapped some pictures and made out way out of the Liberty Bell Pavilion. We headed over to Independence Hall, and noticed that there was a line to get in. We figured that it would be the last tour of the day, so we hopped on. The funny thing was that once we hopped on the line, it moved into the building. Another park ranger had a speech all locked and loaded for us. She brought the group into the old courtroom and explained its significance. Mary actually wanted to ditch the tour, but I told her that I was interested in what the park ranger had to say. We moved from the courtroom to the room where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were signed. Mary and I thought it was funny that we were Constitution junkies. Yesterday, we saw the Constitution, and today, we're seeing where it was signed. Now remembering this room, I thought it would be cool to ask the question about the sun on the back of the chair. The last time I went to Philly, a big hubbub was made about the sun. It's a picture of a half-sun, and the question that was always asked was, "Is the sun rising or falling?" So I decided to ask the question again. I got a simple "Franklin thought it was rising..." Then a guy in the back asked what the room designation was? The sun was situated in the east part of the room. The man said that it was rising, and they set the room up that way because George Washington was a mason. I don't know, but it made sense to me and just moved on. Mary and I looked around the hall, and took in the history. After enough history, we moved on. To go back to our hotel room to discuss dinner plans. One of the more interesting things we saw while walking back was a white van with a coffin on it and a dummy poking out of it. I guess they were trying to give kids a message about drug use. It was certainly a strange thing. We got back to the hotel room, and weighed our options for eating. We could've had dinner downstairs, but that was too much. Eventually, we chose on the Hard Rock Caf�. Yeah, it's one of those places, but we were adventurous. Our waiter was very nice and courteous. I had the steak (BTW, don't get it. It's too expensive. It was good, but not $18.00 good), Mary had the pasta. Mary noticed while eating that the table behind us (about 4 people) had the same waiter, and those people only left the guy a dollar tip. "How rude," I thought. Mary insisted that we bump our tip up to make up for the lousy tip at the other table. As much as it seemed wrong for me to make up for idiots, the guy was good, so I bumped up my tip to $10.00. Then again, I used to work in a service industry, and I know the value of a good tip. Hopefully the guy was happy afterwards. Right before we left, we stopped in the gift shop to see if we could get anything. There was a nice Zippo lighter in the display. As a thank you to my sister for driving for most of the trip, I got it for her. I know it sounds cheesy, but hey. We left the Caf� and went back to the hotel. The excitement was building for tomorrow, as DaveCon2001 was nearing commencement. Being that the 10th trip report is coming, it would be proper for me to start out the day per tradition: Jump to a page:
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