A trip to Phila-balti-delphia-more

Almost a month after our much heralded west coast trip, we decided we needed to go visit friends on the east coast as well.


On Thursday,we shipped off to Baltimore to visit my old college buddies Josh and Brian

Here is me with Brian (reluctantly wearing the Texas visor I got him), Josh (fully embracing the visor) and Josh's fiancee Tina (supporting visor usage by both of them)Brian and Josh both had an assortment of home brew beers for us to drink. Brian impressively brought a keg of homemade Guinness which tasted unbelievable! Josh also had a good home brew of his own although his bottling methods were a little less orthodox. Here is the nalgene brew and the "prison wine" brew. These were just okay, but the ones that made it into the bottles were great.


After home brews at Josh's apartment, we set out for a Baltimore adventure. At the Lexington Market, Roxanne and I had easily the best oysters we have ever had in our lives! These were utterly unbelievable! Below you can see Roxanne tackling a big one!






Next we walked to Baltimore harbor. On the way there we walked by Camden yard. Below we are standing next to Cal Ripkin Jr.'s gravestone.


Here is Brian and I on the harbor. THe USS constellation is behind us.
Here is a view from the top of Federal Hill overlooking the harbor leading to the Chesapeake... As you can see someone else was also enjoying the view that day. He was evidently so moved he took his shirt off.
We proceeded to a pub on Federal Hill for dinner, I had a Maryland Burger (a regular burger with crab piled high). We then proceeded to a bar downtown and partied it up with the locals. At the bar, Josh warned me about the local beer "Natty Bo", but I had to taste one for myself. I can honestly say it was the worst beer I have ever tasted period, and I am no stranger to bad beer (as you will see later).In the morning I caught josh playing Wii with himself using both controllers for a 2 man tennis game.
After some delightful afternoon sushi featuring more Maryland softshell blue crab, Russ picked Rx and I up and took us to Philly. Here is the skyline coming in to town.
Russ tolerated the visor pretty well, but we already knew from his previous visit to Tx. That he is okay with sporting Texas apparel.
We went to a great Greek restaurant that night and then met up with some of R & R's friends at a trendy Philly bar.

After the night out Russ and Roxanne play some paper rock scissors, It looks like Russ got her this time, I am sure it comes from all the practice.
Rachel (aka Gizmo) looks on at the two amateurs... The next day we went to fulfill a craving that had been gnawing at us both for weeks: Philly Cheese Steaks. We got ours at Geno's probably the most famous cheese steak vendor on the south side. I got a provolone cheese steak. Roxanne got a lot of street credit for ordering hers just like the natives "wit wiz" (translation: with onions, with cheeze whiz). As you can see, there was quite a line. After that we toured the Mutter Museum! An awesome hours of medical oddities, bones, fetuses, and other body parts. They dont allow pictures inside, this link shows some of the stuff inside though.

We then hit some beautiful chocolate delicacies at a local coffee shop
Here is everyone enjoying the Schuykill River view.Later on, Brian and Josh met back up with us in Philly after dropping Tina off at the airport. We all headed down to a Jamacian place for Jerked chicken etc. Brian had the Oxtail stew, it was surprisingly delicious!

After dinner we headed to Bob and Barbara's a well known, quite eclectic Philly bar featuring Jazz flute, and PBR everything... Lets just say this... we drank a lot of PBRs. For some reason, we kept stacking them up higher and higher, it was a lot of fun. I felt like a kid with Lego's (a drunk kid). Gang signs were flying... Fun was had...Russ surprisingly got this to balance for a minute or two...






Check out this pair of Diana Ross impersonators we saw...






After Bob and Barbara's we retired to a Belgian bar and enjoyed some Trappists brews. We saw off our friends Josh and Brian that night as they had to get back to their respective dogs...



On Sunday we did more fun touristy stuff like getting our picture taken at the famous LOVE statue...

At the Art museum, I pulled a Rocky and ran up the stairs in triumph!!




We saw about 10 other people do the same thing in about a 2 minute span of time. I love how the stairs to the art museum is a bigger attraction than the actual art museum. We then headed down to ye ole liberty bell. Rachel pointed out that the brochures are quick to tell you that it is a gap and not a crack in the bell... it started out as a crack though...

Here are the ladies at Independence Hall... This is the bell tower where the liberty bell used to hang. The first continental congress was held in this building, the Declaration of Independence was signed here, the first supreme court, senate, congress, were all here... The constitution was also ratified here!
Below is a copy of the articles of confederation... We didnt get to look and see what is on the back, but I have a hunch, some national treasure lies there...
Here is the room where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed! So much History.. our patriotism was deeply stirred.
We left on Monday morning. We weren't eager to come back. We felt very urban, walking everywhere, and living in the big city for a while...We knew we were in Texas when an 8 foot tall pick up truck zoomed by us.... oh well...

For all the pictures, just click on the link off to the right!