We were planning to take our annual girls’ trip this year to the beach again. We were all looking forward to Virginia Beach until the weather forecast showed up as rainy and thunderstorms for the days we were planning to be there. We kept watching the forecast, and when it didn’t change, we decided to switch gears and head to the city instead of the beach. We had originally planned to leave on Thursday for Hartfield (and then to the beach), so since we planned to leave for Philadelphia on Friday morning, I took the girls to do one of our favorite fun activiites on Thursday. I drive the bikes to the W&OD trail, then we bike to our favorite wood-fired pizza spot in Leesburg. We sit outside, eat pizza, drink lemonade, and then bike back. It’s my kind of day!
On the way there, a small butterfly decided to land on Lyla’s arm while she was biking along the path. :)
We had a fabulous lunch when we got to Fireworks, and the girls convinced me to get them the cookie sundae afterwards. I think I had one bite before it was demolished!
The next morning, Mousey came over and we left for Philadelphia. We picked Philly initially because my mom’s neighbor (who happened to be over at the house while my mom and I were trying to come up with a back-up plan for the beach) had a connection at the Ritz Carlton in Philadelphia and offered to put in a call for us to see if we could get a room for a decent rate at short notice. She was able to make that connection for us, so we then started working on a plan for fun in the city.
Of course, the hotel was a big treat. We certainly woudn’t have stayed in as fancy of a place normally, but it was a real treat to stay at such a nice hotel. We were able to use the Club Level floor for food and drinks throughout the day which we all thought was very cool, and they even left us a plate of cookies and a bottle of wine. The girls took the cookies, Mouse and I took the wine! When you don’t spend a lot of time in fancy hotels, little things like this get one rather excited! :)
After getting settled into the hotel, the first thing we did was take advantage of our City Pass. It included several of the activities we wanted to do in the city, including taking care of transportation. We made our way to the Big Bus double decker tour buses and hopped on to head to the Philadelphia Zoo. Since the zoo is aways away from center city, we traveled through several historical landmark areas on top of the double decker bus, learning the history of the city.
We got off the bus at the Philadelphia Museum of Art before connecting again on another bus to the zoo. We didn’t tour the inside of the art museum, but we couldn’t miss the iconic Rocky Balboa statue and the chance to run the famous stairs from the Rocky Movie.
Here’s a link of the action: https://youtu.be/A-NKJ7XGnFQ
We heard a great story about the Rocky statue on our tour bus. After the Rocky movies were completed, Sylvester Stallone donated the statue to Philadelphia as much of the movie and the city were obviously connected. The statue was placed at the top of the steps leading up to the art museum where Rocky ran the stairs in training during the first Rocky movie. The statue generated a lot of tourist traffic and, consequently, brought lots of visitors to the art museum. However the art museum decided that the statue was not a piece or art, rather it was a "movie prop”. So, the art museum pitched a fit and had the statue relocated to a sports areana. When the statue relocated, so did all the tourists and visitors to the art museum. Recognizing their loss in traffic through the art museum, they asked to have the statue back, however they placed it at the bottom of the stairs rather than at the top. When the statue returned, so did the visitors to the art museum, so it looks like Rocky is a piece of art afterall! We also learned that the city had to fence off the statue and make a fenced in waiting line so-to-speak, as so many people wanted to visit the statue and get their picture taken with it that there had to be an orderly system. Clearly, whether or not one sees the statue as art, you have to agree that it’s an iconic piece of movie history. The whole time we were there, people were running the steps and getting to the top, boxing, and putting their fists up in the air! :)
I’ll post more about our trip in my next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment