Dear all,
I hope you are all still reading these blogs! I know sometimes it's hard to keep up but I am having such a good time I need to rub it in!!!!
Ok so this blog is all about my day off with Mikaela, Kelsie, Katie and Omar.
A while ago we decided that for one of our days off we were going to attempt to get into Philadelphia city for a sight seeing day! This is exactly what we did!
So after a lit of organizing and reorganizing we headed out at 930 pm on Wednesday night to motel 6 at king of Prussia. ( Which if you haven't noticed is quite popular with the international staff)
So we walked in there happy but exhausted by the day only to be told we had not been booked in properly. What's more, the hotel was booked out completely. Even though we had a confirmation number and phone call time etc they would not give us a room!
Now king of Prussia may be the second biggest mall In the USA, but it is still in the middle of woop woop.
So the very first thing that ran through my head when I heard this was OMG WE HAVE BEEN DROPPED OFF IN THE MIDDLE OF NO WHERE WITH NO BED TO SLEEP IN AND EVERYWHERE IS CLOSED WE ARE GOING TO BE BUMS FOR THR NIGHT!
Thankfully I looked out the window and saw another hotel two minutes away. It had a room for only 10 bucks more, and the place was brilliant! We went to the room which was amazing, cable flatscreen, pool and spa, gym, free buffet breakfast free Wi fi, the lot! We sorted out our bags and headed to the infamous Wa Wa which I'm pretty sure you are sick of hearing about.
While everyone else decided to drink, I was a good girl and decided not to, so to keep myself awake and sane I grabbed a little bottle of magic. That is, a " 5 hour energy" booster - mainly used for people who are going on long drives. I had had things like this before in Australia and they hadn't done anything for me before so I was not very optimistic, but i forgot it was America. I swear I felt like I was more drunk than kelsie. Supposedly America has ' more relaxed' rules when it comes to what is legal in foods. It was amazing and crazy at the same time. As the others drifted to sleep at 2:30 am, I was still bouncing off the walls, my heart was going so fast and I felt like I was on top of the world.
Long story short I didn't sleep a wink all night, I officially pulled my first all nighter, by myself in a hotel room.
Anyway, the others work up and we enjoyed to free Brekky and actually managing to get on the bus we were supposed to we were on our way to phili!
The bus trip was actually really cool, got to see some of the countryside and outskirts of phili. We arrived and hopped out of the bus, the very first thing I noticed was the smell, it was like a muggy smell. What's more then lends of my camera had fogged up, it was so so hot!
So we headed off walking towards the " old city" wheee much of the sightseeing things are.
However after only 5 minutes we came across our first dilemma, a dead guy. Not even kidding there was a man dead lying on the side of the road people where around him, shocked. It was pretty scary.
After a quick stop at a fantastic second hand book shop ( and 4 books later) we came to the city centre.
Philadelphia is a very pretty city and like Canberra it's really spread out so it looked quite small even though it is the 8 th most populated city in the country. It is famous for it's amazing 5 story high mosaics on office walls and murals on every corner. Supposedly if you are caught in the city doing graffiti your punishment is to help create these beautiful artworks. There are also a lot of funny sculptures everywhere. All very arty, it reminded me a little of Melbourne but more modern. My fave was a two story sculpture of a peg.
We wandered around the touristy area for about 5 minutes before being hassled by a guy who wanted us to go on his double decker sightseeing bus. Being the dumb tourists we are, we took his first offer without a gamble, but it was pretty good anyway.
We spent a good hour and a half on the bus taking in all the sights of Phili, it was worth the money. We got so see everything! The art museum, the 'thinker' a famous statue, the fountains and the museums. We saw rockys stairs where the famous scene from that movie rocky was shot. And the prison where thy shot the last scene in transformers. My favorite was driving down the street that the car crash in the sixth sense was shot on.
We also got to see where ice-cream was invented! Did you know the very first Icecream flavor was tomato?
The ride was unbelievably hot. I'm talking sweat dripping down your back, thighs sticking to the chairs hot. So it was a huge relief to get into some aircon at the visitors centre after the bus ride. After sorting out what we wanted to do for the rest of the day we ventured back out into the wild, hopped back on the bus for half the the tour and stopped off at the love park to have a look.
Basically the love park has a special sign that people might recognize if they saw it. It is basically to word LOVE in a box shape. People from all over the world come to this statue to take a photo under it with their loved one. It had a huge beautiful blue fountain behind it. Many people actually have this sign as a tattoo!!
We took the traditional photo and then, because of the heat, decided to paddle in the fountain, which ended up being a full on swim we were soaked! But it was fantastic because we dried off straight away waiting for the tour bus again.
After another tour with a different tour guide who told us completely different information Whig was great we went into the air con, grabbed something to eat and headed for a quick look at the liberty bell and by then it was almost time to go home.
Before this though, we had just enough time to grab dinner at the hardrock cafe. it was amazing, themed to the max with guitars and drumsets from famous people on the wall, posters and signed photos. A stage which lots of famous people MUST have performed at, it was very exciting!
Stuffed and sleepy we headed to the train station and finally headed back to the camp.
Te day was fantastic! It was such a great experience and really got me excited for traveling after camp! Not long now!