Philadelphia trip - Jul 15, 2017

We had planned a summer vacation at California. Since we envisaged a lot of driving, I felt it was prudent for me to acclimatize myself a bit with the US road conditions and also sharpen my driving skills. ( I don’t drive regularly and the last time I drove was in Feb 2017). Therefore, on Jul 15, 2017 we hired a car (Kia Sportage) and decided to go to Philadelphia. Philly is around 85 miles from where we stay and it took about a couple of hours to get there. We went to the visitor center to get some information on the must see places though we had done our own research. We were told that the tickets for the Independence Hall were exhausted for the day but there was a special entry at 5 pm.


We visited the theater in the visitor center which was playing a movie on the American revolution. After watching the movie, we headed to view the Liberty Bell. There was a queue and it took us around  minutes to get in. Once we were done with this, we took a lunch break and then decided to visit the Rocky Steps. Ever since I watched the movie, I had always wanted to go there and this was the moment when that wish would materialize. We decided to walk from the visitor center to the Philadelphia Museum of Art – the steps of the museum were referred to as the Rocky steps. It took us around minutes to get there. Walking is one of the best ways to see and explore a  lot of things in a city. En route to the museum we saw the statue of ‘The Thinker’. Next to the museum is a statue of ‘Rocky’. We took a picture of ourselves in front of the statue. Later, my daughter and I ran up the steps a la Sylvester Stallone. As we were exhausted with our exploits we decided to take a cab on our return journey to the visitor center. After lazing around for some more time, we decided to head back home.

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