road trip—philadelphia

It was 9 degree when I entered the car yesterday. What the heck had I gotten myself into?

For a Christmas gift I bought Bonnie a road trip to Philly. We were combining three things into one spectacular day. It was supposed to be Tuesday, but with the snow we pushed it to Thursday. Not because we were afraid of driving or walking in a little snow. Rather we were afraid of spending the day on the turnpike or worse, the Schuykill, behind the 15-car accident that was sure to happen.

I picked Bonnie up at 8 and we ultimately left about 8:15. We arrived at the Schuykill at 9:24. It was nearly 10:30 when we arrived at 4th and Arch. Part of that was my fault. The turn fro the Ben Franklin and the turn for Arch street were next to each other. I picked Jersey. It cost $5 to come back!

Firs stop, the Wyndown Hotel at 4th and Arch to sign in for the Philadelphia West walk. (There are  four Philly walks.) By then it was a balmy 18 degrees. In hindsight it was probably dumb to do a Volkssport walk in 18 degree weather. We read nothing. We looked at little. We just kept moving. I picked this walk because it went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We were going down the street to the Museum of Natural Sciences to see the "Chocolate" exhibit.

It was nice. But much smaller than I anticipated. The dinos were cool — Bubba would love them, and the butterflies were beautiful. The best part was when we were on the 3rd floor. There was a school group being read the riot act by the teacher. (He must have been a former Marine. If I was in that group I would have wet myself.) Let's just say he was not a happy camper. "In 15 years of chaperoning students I haven't never had a group as bad as this one." Thank goodness we were not around to see what they did. They were so bad he was placing many of them on a "no field trips" list. Including an upcoming one ice skating. They were 6th, 7th grade.  Glad there are still teachers who discipline students.

Because chocolate was the theme, and it was freaking cold, we skipped the part of the walk that went to the art museum — it looped back — and headed down 19th to Walnut. There we went to 15th to look for the restaurant — Max Benner's Chocolate Bar. Yes. A chocolate restaurant. We only had the best hot chocolate. Ever. I bet the deserts are to die for. If you go, it's really on 15th, not Walnut, and it is not a cheap place to eat.

At some point we discovered we lost our Volkssport directions. But I remembered it having us go out Walnut, up 6th, around Independence Hall and back to the hotel.  Since the north-south streets were really windy and cold, we did a two east, one north, pattern to break it up. And ended up going to far north.

Can we talk parking in Philadelphia? It's crazy expensive. The hotel lot was $12 for the first hour and $10 thereafter to a $32 max. We saw some higher. One or two lower during our walk. But that seemed to be the average price. Add to that a twenty percent—20%—parking tax. I spent almost as much for parking as I did for a fancy lunch. My parking lot total was $42. American. To make matters worse, we paid for parking and when I inserted my paid card in the machine, it wanted to recharge me. That would have been crazy.

It was 21 degrees when we got in the car to go home.

All in all it was a great day. My camera is broken, so no pixs from me. Bonnie took a few with her iPhone. When I get them, I'll post them. It was just too cold to take gloves off to take pictures.