One of two schools we saw in the area (the other was Brown University). We caught some good glimpses of RISD, though, while walking through downtown. Plus, I actually know someone who goes to RISD, so it gets my attention by default. You can definitely see a lot of the influences of the school's students all over downtown...mainly in the local stores...definitely a good window shopping area
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Providence,Rhode Island
So our next stop was to be in the capital of the smallest state. We were going to crash at my friend Molly's place. Makes sense...little person...little state (Molly, if you're reading this...I'm just keeeedeeeeng). The area is small, but looks very nice! You have the capital, and two universities all within the small city limits. Not a whole lot of other states can claim that!
Mystic Seaport, Connecticut
I don't know how many times my sisters watched the movie Mystic Pizza. So many times, that it would be impossible for me to not remember it. Anyway, on our way through Connecticut I saw the signs to go there. If that pizza place would have been real, I would have made the guys turn off to go there and try it...man I'm addicted to pizza.
Rocky Statue - Philadelphia,Pennsylvania
Well you can't complete the whole Rocky theme without checking out that statue. If I remember correctly, they made it for Rocky 3. I've heard rumors that they left it to the city after the movie was done being filmed. But, the city didn't want it. Still, it was too heavy to move, so the city just left it there...If anyone knows whether this is true or not, I'd like to know...
Benjamin Franklin Parkway - Philadelphia,Pennsylvania
So that street that I mentioned in the Rodin Museum post was actually this one. The main reason we were walking down the street is because it's the one that Sylvestor Stallone ran down in that famous Rocky training scene (yeah yeah...I know, pretty corny, but whatever, we're tourists!). Up in the distance of this pic you'll see the Art Museum that has the steps he runs up
Rodin Museum - Philadelphia,Pennsylvania
Add this to the quickly growing list of things I didn't know were in Philly. I'm sure most people reading this will probably recognize the statue above. We were just walking down a big street in Philly when we saw it. I wonder how good the replica statue, we saw outside, is of the real thing. We just walked around the outside and were able to see another of his works in the front archway:
I remember seeing a photo of this in an Art History class back at school. The piece is called The Gates Of Hell. That's some amazing skill...
Franklin Institute - Philadelphia,Pennsylvania
I saw a picture of this statue while at the visitor's center that was by Independence Hall. I guess I just always figured all those kind of statues were somewhere in D.C.. It turned out that this guy is in the lobby for one of their museums. We were short on time, so we weren't going to check out the museum, but at least we could take a couple of shots of this guy who was nice placed in their free lobby!
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Independence Hall - Philadelphia,Pennsylvania
So, first up on that day's agenda was to visit here. I'm sure you've seen this painting in your history books growing up:
Well, that took place in this building. One interesting thing that I learned during the tour about this picture had to do with the delegate that is signing the Declaration. Apparently he was the only guy whom the artist could not find a previous profile painting of. So to complete the painting without deviating from fact, he just "turned him away" from the viewing audience and everything worked out. Wanna see what the room looks like in real life? Here ya go:
It's pretty surreal to walk around in that building. The tour guide was pretty good, and they made a point to have different accessories on each desk in the real room to show where they thought each delegate sat back in the day. Pretty neat on their part. Also, the chair where George Washington would have sat is the original. Pretty amazing!
Excuse Me?
When my friend Neha was talking about her neighborhood, she mentioned that the locals liked to refer to the area as the gayborhood. This sign seemed to agree...
Philly's Growing On Me
So after hanging out with my friend Neha the night before (thanks for letting us crash Neha!!), we were off to an early start the next day to see as much as we could of the rest of Philly. At first, we didn't think we had much left to see, but we ended up finding out that we were way wrong.
Let me just say that this city surprised me a lot. It's not that I thought Philly was a bad city or anything, I just didn't think anything stood out about it. The people there seem very cool and laid back. And the layout of the city is perfect for the urbanites...seems very seattle-like in some areas...
Monday, October 02, 2006
Franklin Court - Philadelphia,Pennsylvania
If you're ever in Philadelphia, make sure to head over to Franklin court. The post office right there on Market street will stamp a B Free Franklin stamp when on your stamps when you mail anything from there. Makes a post card from Philly even neater!
What This Trip Is About
I saw this quote when walking through the visitor center and thought it was better than any thing I could have said to describe what this trip was about. Just wanted to share it with you...
Liberty Bell - Philadelphia,Pennsylvania
Oh man, now we're talking. I don't know about you, but I've read about this bell so many times during history classes growing up. It was somewhat surreal to be standing 3 feet away from it.
The thing that made us all chuckle about all the hoopla is that the main premise behind the bell (the crack) has nothing to do with any major historical event like a bomb blast or anything. Nope, it has to do with shoddy craftsmanship...oops!
But at least it's free to visit it!
Pat's - Philadelphia,Pennsylvania
On to our second cheese steak destination...Pat's. So, from what I heard from people familiar with the area, there is a huge rivalry with Geno's as you'd expect. Pat's seemed like a no nonsense type place that seemed to have a little more customers at that time than Geno's did. They don't have all the crazy decorations that their competitor has and if you look at their menu, it tells you how to order (I heard that if you go up to the window on regular days and don't know what you want, you'll be told to go to the end of the line...holy Soup Nazi!)
Their sandwich, right off the bat, looks way different from the first:
Well! They've got Geno's beat on filling amount! We ordered the exact same ingredients as the last place to be objective about our comparison. And, we all quickly agreed that the sandwich seemed to lack the flavor of the last place. But, going back to what I heard, people always seem to like just one or the other...makes for a great rivalry huh? I recommend you try both to see which one you like!
Geno's Steaks - Philadelphia,Pennsylvania
So let me just start out by saying I've never been a big Cheese Steak fan. But I hadn't been to Philly before either. Given all the buzz about their cheese steaks, it was high up on our agenda of things to do in Philly. We found out that two of the most popular places to eat are right across the street from each other.
The first one we hit was called Geno's. The only reason we picked it was because of the added gaudiness of its building. Nice job guys! but we knew we'd be having dinner with a friend of mine in a few hours so we didn't want to get overly full. We decided to split one amongst the three of us for a taste test:
We went pretty plain with ours...just steak, provolone cheese and onions. In a word, I thought it was awesome. The steak had great flavor and the onions were sauteed just enough. The bread also had a little juice in it that reminded me of Italian Beef sandwiches from Chicago. The only knock I had on their sandwich was the amount of stuff in their sandwich...it was a little lean on the filling...
What's funny about this photo?
Give up? Look at the mini SUV in this pic...it's parked in the median! It was the first thing we noticed as we entered Philadelphia. It wasn't the only one either. For the entire length of the street, the entire median was full of parked cars. I've never seen that anywhere so I just had to have a picture of it.
East Coast Tolls
Oh my God...the tolls we hit through Maryland, Jersey, and New York are downright crazy. I'm used to tolls from my Chicago days, but those are nothing compared to these. When you'[re seeing the cost of tolls to be $4.50, $5, and $6 you can't help but have your jaw drop. We were thinking that it might have been smarter to get the Easy Pass instead to save on the cost. At least, we thought it would be like the Illinois I Pass that makes all tolls half of what cash only drivers would have to pay. Nope...not on the East Coast...everyone pays the same amount...the passes out there are just for convenience...ouch...
Boardwalk - Atlantic City,New Jersey
I could be wrong, but isn't this *the* famous boardwalk? The one that the song that goes "unnnder the booooarrddwalk...down by the sea..." is about? Well, it's nice and all...but if you're looking to get blown away by some majesty about it, forget it. There's a ton of souvenir shops along the way...oh wait...excuse me, I meant overpriced souvenir shops. Need an example? In our ongoing quest to get postcards, I needed to get more stamps for them. I found a machine for stamps in one that offered two $0.24 postcard stamps for $1.00. Yeah, no adjust that for items that aren't just 24 cents and you get the picture.
There are a few big casinos along the boardwalk as well, but even those pale in size to the giant Las Vegas ones. A coworker of mine from Jersey mentioned that no one flies to Atlantic City to go there. The only people that go there are from New York or travelling through on road trips...makes sense to me...
Sunday, October 01, 2006
So This Is What This Place Looks Like During The Day
In our mad rush to get out of Baltimore the night before, we had to arrive in Atlantic City at night. On the plus side, you get to see all the bright lights of Atlantic City. It's basically a smaller version of Las Vegas for those who haven't been there. But the next morning was all about exploring under the aid of the sun...
Atlantic City,New Jersey
Overall, we were not impressed with Baltimore. So, we figured why even bother sticking around? We didn't unpack at any hotel, so it was easy to keep on moving. Atlantic City was a good 2 hours away so we got out of dodge right after dinner.
The one thing that started to get us at this point were the tolls. Oh man, now i'm used to tolls from when I lived in Chicago. But even today, the tolls in Chicago are nothing compared to those on the east coast. And the drive to Atlantic City is no different.
There really is nothing in the part of Jersey that we passed through. And even Atlantic City is not that big...But for that night, we just had one thing in mind...Where's the poker room?
Crab Cakes - Baltimore,Maryland
The road tripping book we had seemed to be spot on about all the aspect of Baltimore to this point, so when we read that we should try the crab cakes there we did...I must say, I'm not a bit crab anything guy. But these were extremely tender. Definitely recommend you try some while visiting there...
Inner Harbor - Baltimore,Maryland
One of the nicest areas in the city. The harbor has a huge boardwalk where you find a good mix of tourists and regulars. It seems to be a favorite for the local joggers as we saw tons of them. The night we hit it, they also had a street performer doing covers of guitar ballads...not too shabby!
Baltimore,Maryland
Sigh...I had much higher expectations for this city. Everyone had told me about how clean and prety it was...especially around teh harbor area. Well yeah, but that's not at all a good representation of this city. When we arrived into the city, we wanted to find our hotel first. The Streets & Trips we were using found a location for a Super 8 near the city, so we followed those directions.
When we got off the highway, it was looking like the Baltimore I'd heard about (see pic above). But, as we following along the road (I believe it was route 40) things just got progressively worse. The architecture for the city was still very cool, but you could definitely see the area looking more rundown really fast. I felt as though the whole northern part of the city was a ghetto to be quite honest. It was like a Dave Chappelle joke where we just started seeing nothing but liquor stores everywhere. This billboard below just iced it:
Are you kidding me? The pretty part of downtown was nice, but it just seemed so wrong how they ignored the really bad parts of town (which is a pretty large part of downtown as we saw it...
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Hawks - Ohio River Valley
So, I've heard a lot of people complain about how boring the drive is along the valley. Personally, I liked it. I think I had an extra thing going for me since I had already passed through so many different terrain types already along the trip. Montana was distinctively different with sharp rocky mountains. The "mountains" along the valley were not sharp at all and filled with trees a lot different from the evergreens we're used to in Seattle.
But the most interesting part of the trip for me were all the hawks you could see along the highway flying around. They looked huge even from our vantage point. Just amazing to see them...
Wheeling,West Virginia
We stopped here to add to our side job of getting postcards from each state along the way. Luckily for us, there's a 13 or so mile stretch that you have to cross before getting into Pennsylvania from Ohio. The city was very "cute" looking...that is, until I saw they had a sports team called the "Nailers"....wow!
Columbus,Ohio
Ok, I make my fair share of fun of my Ohio State friends and all, but I have to admit, that the city of Columbus is actually quite pretty. They have a decent skyline, but in general the area felt like a smaller Seattle to me without all the hills.
White Castle Headquarters - Columbus,Ohio
Oh man! Am I dreaming? So, some of my Ohio State friends might have mentioned in the past about the White Castle HQ, but I can't remember at the moment. Hey, I'm an Illini, it's not like I'm going to pay *that* much attention about Ohio State stuff! ;o)
Anyway, we decided to check it out in hopes that they might have a tour. The honest truth is they didn't have a tour. It's a corporate office...people don't just go there to see a tour because they don't make the actual food there. But, they made up a tour for us anyway! I swear the people there were so nice to us!
They had a lot of memorabilia of old White Castle stuff and walked us through the whole building except for the testing lab (DARN!). At the end of our tour they even gave us souvenirs:
*White Castle shirt
*White Castle bandana
*White Castle coffe mug
*2 White Castle pens
and all nicely packaged in a White Castle bag. they rock! :o)
Hope Today Is Better Than Yesterday
We really didn't have too high of hopes for our activities in day 10 of the trip. We had made it to Columbus, Ohio a little late the night before in hopes of being able to reach Baltimore a lot earlier the next day.
We were on our trek to find yet another Super 8 hotel but were denied the night before and ended up crashing at a Red Roof Inn. Pretty ghetto, and no free internet, but the rate was really cheap and all we wanted to do was sleep anyway, so it all worked out.
One huge bonus was our accidentally passing the White Castles Headquarters!!! OMG! It's like the angels in the heavans were singing their hallelujahs! Guess where our first visit was going to be??
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
"Some" Bell - Newport,Kentucky
If there's one thing we've noticed during our travels is that cities will put up almost anything in their towns to draw attention from tourists. It works with us at least...Now, this bell may have a lot of significence to them, but I just can't remember for the life of me what it was...I'll look it up and update this post later...
UPDATE: Alright, a quick search for this brought up a Wiki site for it. Apparently, the name of the bell is the World Peace Bell. It's teh world largest swinging bell. It's one of the newest attractions we've seen too...looks like they built it in time for the 2000 millenium.Newport, Kentucky
This was the city that ran along the other side of the river opposite to Cincinnati. The people there were extremely nice for the small amount of time we were actually there...
Example #1:
HOT girl joggin across the bridge slowed down to say hi to us....yeah...anyone who knows us knows *that* doesn't happen often...
Example #2:
I'm, crossing the street while the light is turning yellow...a car is turning onto the street and almost hits me before breaking hard...they roll down the window and I think they're about to yell at me...nope...they apologized! wow...go Kentucky!
Cincinnati, Ohio
Just wanted to get in a quick photo of the city at sunset...I took this while we were crossing over into Kentucky...nice looking city!
Purple People Bridge - Cincinnati, Ohio
So after our failed attempts in Indy, we decided to hit the next closest city over in Ohio...Cincinnati that is. I will say that I was mildy surprised by that city. It lies at the southern border of Ohio and is separated from Kentucky via a river. They have a bridge (see name in title) that you can walk across to go into Kentucky if you'd rather do that instead of drive. We figured we'd walk across it and take a picture of the state sign along the way. Wrong...no state sign on the bridge! What's up with that?
Well, Kentucky made it state number 11 for us anyway. And as for the sign photo, we figured we'd just drive over and get it that way instead...
Indianapolis Motor Speedway - Indianapolis, Indiana
So we read in Sung road trip book that the speedway gives a tour around the track on a bus everyday until 4:30PM. Well, after our late start in Chicago, we hauled buns over to Indianapolis in hopes of reaching the last tour of the day. We ended up arriving with 30 minutes to spare...yay! Or so we thought...
Apparently, we crossed a timezone somewhere along our trip south and ended up being a half hour late for the last tour. Boooo! At least the guard at the entrance was nice enough to let us into the museum's parking lot (which was in the middle of the track) long enough to take some photos of the track.
The Day Where Nothing Seemed To Go Right
So the plan was to get out of Chicago and continue on with the road trip and hopefully get somewhere interesting by the end of the day. Define interesting? Well, apparently that would end up meaning anywhere outside of the state of Indiana. The only thing was that as the day progressed, we kept getting our plans changed on us for various reasons.
For starters, we had to go to Hertz to replace our car because a small crack in the windshield was growing in it. That ended up taking a lot longer than we thought and so we didn't get out of Chicago until after noon. But our hope was to make it to Indianapolis to catch the last tour of the Indy 500 speeday...
Is That Cloud Following Us?
Man, everywhere we've gone, people have mentioned how the weather has been so nice right up until we arrived. Well, things didn't change a whole lot once we arrived in Chicago. At the very least, the weather got warmer than the frozen tundra Yellowstone turned out to be. We could walk around downtown in t-shirts again! Yay! But the rain came with a vengeance our last night in town.
Field Museum - Chicago,Illinois
So after the aquarium, Pawan and Sung head out to the field Museum next door. There was a big King Tut exhibit, but they opted to just do the general portion of the museum. Apparently each side attraction in the museum was an extra cost added on top of the initial admission. And those guys being the stingy bastards that they are, opted to not see it. aw well!
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Shedd Aquarium - Chicago, Illinois
I never realized just how awesome the museums are in Chicago until I left. I tried hitting the aquarium in Seattle, and was extremely dissappointed to say the least. If you really want to see a great assortmant of sea life, you'll have to visit this museum!
BTW...photo courtesy of Pawan...
White Castle - Chicago,Illinois
mmmm...How many times must I say how much I love White Castles? Let me count the ways....
We've been talking up White Castles in Seattle for so long and it only got worse after the Harold & Kumar Movie came out. But Sung never experienced the "Drunk Eat At White Castle" moment, so we had to add it to our agenda.
mmmm...I could go for some White Castles right now!
DarkRoom - Chicago,Illinois
Alright...so if you want to be totally technical about it, day 8 actually started at a bar in Chicago. The cool thing about Chicago being so big is that I can hit a new bar every time I go back to visit. This time around we hit a place called DarkRoom. It was pretty neat...part lounge part dance area...with New Age type music. We met up with other Seattle transplants there (hi Vivien! hi Katie!) and had a blast...at least i think I remember that! ;o)
Ok...BREAK!
So on Saturday we decided to split up as a group to cover more ground. Pawan hit downtown to meet up with Sung with the plan to check out more museums and food in Chicago...I hung back to take care of an issue with out rental car...but i'll get into that later...
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Buckingham Fountain - Chicago, Illinois
No...no relation to Buckingham Palace. Anybody who ever watched Married With Children should remember this view. We were relaxing in the area when the "music show" started. All that means is that they started blaring "America The Beautiful" on speakers and the fountains lights turned out. Not that big a deal until you see the Chicago skyline in the backgroun as well. Makes this a truly magnificent fountain
Millennium Park - Chicago, Ilinois
Fun new attraction to the Chicago waterfront. I haven't been able to catch a concert here, but I'd love too. My favorite part of the park is the bean though. You can get some awesome photos off the reflections:
But in the end, I just love how random it is to have something like it along the city's skyline!
Tribune Tower - Chicago, Illinois
In terms of architecture, the Tribune building is just a wonderful building. But there's a little known fact about the building that even most Chicagoans don't know about. If You're ever downtown and walk past this building, you'll be able to see pieces of other buildings placed along the facade all around this building. And we're not talking about just "any" buildings. The structures are so famous that you can't help but ask yourself, "are these for real?"
You can see more of the bricks off my flickr page, but some of the highlights:
*Great Wall Of China
*Taj Mahal
*White House
*Colloseum
*Parthenon
*Berlin Wall
*World Trade Center
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
