Philly Day 2: A Little Less Scary

Aug 5/08
Philadelphia. Still no internet. Yippee.
I'm writing this and I'll upload it when I get it.
Today I went over to see the Liberty Bell and the girl at the hostel told me to get a free ticket. So while I was killing time before Congress Hall, where the declaration of Independence was signed, I went to see the Liberty Bell. It has crazy security. They took my bag, dumped it out, went through every zipper pocket, patted me down. Just to see the Bell. They said they security check took 15 minutes for the Congress centre so I gave that a pass.


I started the long walk through the worst part of town to the Penitentiary. Strange the jail is in the worst part of town. It was noon, about 45 degrees and I thought I might now make it. The homeless people here are very insistent. I stopped by a K-Mart and while looking at some baseball cards this come comes up to me and says "Do you like cards?" so I said yes, and he pulls out some football cards. I figure he's lonely and a card collector so I look at them and hand them back and say "nice". He says "Make me an offer..." and we're bartering in the K-Mart store. I said I only liked baseball cards and he gets all mad at me, like I was leading him on. "You said you liked cards!" I started to walk away and then he says "Buy them and sell them on eBay!" and I kind of ran for my life.
That was fun.

I saw this great abandoned hotel:

and then I had to keep moving, again for fear of my life.
Finally I got to the Penitentiary and it was well worth it. It was used from the mid-1800's to the early 1980's and then abandoned for 20 years so it was kind of falling apart but they restored a few sections and stopped the roofs from falling on people's heads.

This is a replica of a cell from Guantanamo Bay. They had a few artists installations in some cells which was stupid, but this was the best. I can't believe a modern cell fits inside one of the cells from the 1830's. How do they sit down? They prisoners get two buckets, one for water and one for going to the bathroom. And this is in 2008.

Then they had Al Capone's cell:

Some more shots of inside the prison:


It didn't seem like the place to be.
Then I went to the Rodin Museum:

It was good, but small, I was only there about 5 minutes.
Then off to the Museum. For one of the biggest in America it seemed small.
They had cool statues out front:

And the steps Rocky ran up in some movie I never saw.

With a good view of the city from the top:

Inside I saw the Sunflowers by Van Gogh which I also say in London so either there are two and one's a fake and no one noticed or something strange is going on here.

Another couple shots of this wonderful hostel, in slightly better shape than the prison. At least in the prison they had movie night.


A view of the Philadelphia skyline from the top of the stadium.

A shot of Citizen's Bank Park:

Jorge Cantu left the Rays and joined the Marlins which I didn't know:

Including one of me:

What was cool was the pitchers warm up bullpen was double-deckered:

Tomorrow the zoo and Wal-mart and the gay village.