Philadelphia Trip: Day One

Right now, I'm still quite wacky from the trip. I got home at about 8am this morning and slept till around four. My head has felt like it's floating away from my body since about 5am this morning. I sound like a frog right now too. Screaming, chanting, singing and generally losing your mind for about three hours will do that to you though. Anyway, I'm breaking this trip into two blog posts.

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I took a trip to Philadelphia on Tuesday and Wednesday to go see the U.S Men's National Team play Mexico. I went with my best friend Nick, his little Sister Devin and his friend Andy.

Tuesday was mostly a travel day. They picked me up about a quarter after eight in the morning, we got gas and got on I-70. We spent our time talking, a lot of time just making fun of town names or bridges. Andy tried to get every trucker we passed to blow his horn before we went to sleep in the back seat of the van. He only got one. He was pretty delirious/goofy though, because he worked 3rd shift before coming on this trip with us.

It's about an eight hour drive from Columbus to Philadelphia. I always thought Ohio was bad in terms of Road Construction, but it was ridiculous in Pennsylvania. Worse though is that in most of their Construction the Speed Limit is 45. We stopped twice while on the Pennsylvania turnpike at the "Service Plazas." The food prices there are sort of ridiculous, because they know they've got you by the balls. I ended up paying like 6 dollars for a slice of pizza for lunch.

After a minor mishap getting off the turnpike we were nearly in Philadelphia. We got slightly lost in the city, because I was confused as navigator what GPS was actually meant, but that was quickly remedied. We got off at the last exit in Pennsylvania and we were right by our Hotel. We drove around for a bit to look at the two stadiums and the arena that were right by our hotel before going back though. We pulled into our Hotel around four in the afternoon, which was the earliest check-in time.

When we got to our hotel room, we choose bunkmates (Andy/Nick and Devin/Me) and then just chilled for a few hours. Andy totally crashed. It was absolutely freezing in there. I found that the asshole before us had set the Thermostat to 53 degrees. I cranked that shit up quick. Our window gave us a view of Downtown Philadelphia





We looked up where to get a Philly Cheesesteak for dinner. We choose a place near our hotel called "Tony Luke's Cheesesteaks."



It was almost eight when we drove over. It was fairly crowded, but the wait in line wasn't terrible. We each ordered our food (Nick got two, one for later) and once it was ready we sat and eat. Evidence of said consumption in terrible yellow lighting:

My Cheesesteak



Nick



Andy and Devin



Me chowin' down



The cheesesteaks were yummy. I'm not one to complain about grease normally, but this were pretty crazy in terms of that. I'm glad I had one, but I also don't think I want another cheesesteak for quite a while.

We went back to our room for a bit to let our meal settle and then we headed down to the sports bar downstairs. Nick and Andy got Yuengling beer, which they were excited about. I took a sip after hearing them talk about how good it was and my reaction was "that's still beer" (I really don't like beer). I drank a rum in coke and then some fancy Raspberry Lemonade mixed drink, which was ridiculously yummy. I couldn't even tell that there was alcohol in it. Devin had a virgin Dackery.

After our few drinks we went back to our room, watched Conan, and then we turned out the lights and we went to sleep. That was the first day of our trip. We did a lot on day 2, which I will tell you about tomorrow.

Thanks for reading

-Michael