Philadelphia

(Contributed by V. Hari) (12 Aug 2002)

Last weekend saw me going to the place in U.S with a lot of history. Yes, its Philadelphia the place with history dating back to 1776. After doing some shopping in NJ, in the morning on Saturday, I set out with my friend to Philadelphia in the afternoon. It was a good 2 hour drive from the place where my friend was staying. Instead of driving through the highway, we took the roads which lead through the different counties of New Jersey. The climate also being nice, it was a wonderful drive where you could find lots of greenery, and some calm counties all through your way.

The first stop in our tour was at a place called Penn's landing. This is a riverside area (river Delaware) and a very nice place to spend the evening. This is named after William Penn who is supposed to be the founder to Pennsylvania. On the other side of the river was part of New Jersey. One could also get to see the beautiful Ben Franklin bridge connecting Philadelphia with New Jersey.

After spending around 3 hours there and having a good walk around the area, we then had a small tour of the city, just seeing some places like the government buildings, the educational institutions (like Wharton) and then went to the Art museum. Though it was closed, one could get a good view of the city from there and so spent few minutes there as well. We then proceeded to my friend's relative's place. We had a very good dinner, and around midnight, we went to a nearby Mexican restaurant just to taste mexican cuisine there. The place was nice, and crowded at that time of the hour. It was quite surprising to see that there they asked for age-proof for people to enter. From there, we drove once again to Penn's landing through some of the active areas of the city and finally returned back at around 2:30 in the night. Then I was watching a movie for some more time before retiring to bed.

In the morning, my friend's cousin and myself set out at around 7:30 and then first went to the station called as 30th street station. This is the one of the oldest stations of the country. From there we went to the old city area and there we parked our car to start exploring the place by walk. We covered lots of places like Liberty Bell, Rose Garden, Magnolia Garden, First Bank of United States, Library Hall, the Declaration House before coming to the "America's most historic square mile" which houses the Independence Hall and also the place where the Constitution was drafted. After a long walk, we again drove back to our place through Franklin Parkway which has fountains, small parks, statues, monuments etc. At the sides of the road, there were the flags of almost all the countries.

In the evening, we again returned back to New Jersey after spending a good time there in Philadelphia - "the city that loves you back".