Philly - American history, pop culture and ❤️

We thought it was hot. It was in the 80s after all. We had no idea what was in store for us on the weather front in the days to come. And…it was memorial day weekend, so it was pretty crowded. I just love crowds, not 🙄, especially when it's hot... But we saw the house where Thomas Jefferson wrote the declaration of independence, 
the printing press that Ben Franklin ran, (Did you know that literally upper case, capital letters, were kept in the top (upper) case and the small letters, lower case, in the bottom (lower) case??? 😲) Betsy Ross's house, 
Ben Franklin's tomb, a bunch of other historically important buildings, 
the liberty bell, independence hall, 
the actual room where they SIGNED the declaration of independence (ok, for those of you who don't know, I'm a bit of a history nerd and I had some goosebumps in that room. Talk about being in the room where it happened!)
This is seriously the history of our country.

After all that we thought it might be time for some less serious stuff, so we left the Independence Hall National Park and headed for the art museum and the famous "Rocky Balboa steps". Surprisingly, we were not the only people with that idea. What?!?! 
After running to the top Rocky style 
(ok, walking at a rather sedate pace with short rests every 20+ steps) we thought our efforts were well deserving of a reward and went in search of a brewery/brew pub. We found one that had good beer, good food and I got my dog fix. There must have been at least 8 dogs there and some were puppies ❤️❤️❤️. 
We've decided breweries/brew pubs are our sorts of people. ❤️

Speaking of love, it was definitely in the air in this city of brotherly love, we encountered multiple weddings in our explorations. One in a rose garden (a sweet, intimate affair), one in the imposing Trinity church (their guests, in formal attire, were bussed in on luxury coaches), one was in the park near the art museum and one was in a riverfront park.

This was my first time in Philadelphia and I liked it. I found it to be a nice manageable size,  with lots of parks, trees, green space and bike paths abound along the rivers, etc. Perhaps it was just the sections we were in that were so appealing. 🤷   There was good history and good food. We had the most magnificent sandwich for lunch, ok maybe I was still exhausted and a little delirious, but it seemed like the best panini I had ever eaten, honestly!

All in all, a good start! American history 101 continues on our next stop, Chippokes Plantation State Park, VA, just across the James River from Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg.

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