{"id":11,"date":"2011-07-13T00:50:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T00:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/?p=11"},"modified":"2013-12-23T00:43:59","modified_gmt":"2013-12-23T00:43:59","slug":"philly-day-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/?p=11","title":{"rendered":"Philly – Day One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Took the train from Union Station (DC) to Philadelphia’s Historic 30th Street Station.\u00a0 Wow, had no idea the Philly station was so cool.\u00a0 Great architecture, huge war memorial statue, old-fashioned flipping sign.<\/p>\n

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Once in Philadelphia, we dropped of our bags at the hotel and took the PHLASH <\/a>trolley to the Philadelphia Museum of Art<\/a>.\u00a0 Diana was looking for more of this year’s Academic Decathlon art, so she toured the museum while I explored outside.\u00a0 (She reports ~20 Picassos, a handful of Degas, Renoir, Monet, Manet, Rodin originals, Chegall, and other odds and ends.\u00a0 Who knew?)<\/p>\n

In front of the museum are the famous “Rocky Steps<\/a>.”\u00a0 In several of the Rocky films, Sylvester Stallone’s character works out (in part) by running up the steps in front of the museum.\u00a0 It was really fun to hang out at the steps.\u00a0 There is a a brass set of footprints at the top of the steps where Rocky makes his triumphant stance, there is a pretty steady stream of folks re-enacting the jog up the steps (and if you make the dash, a local hawker tries to sell you a t-shirt), and there is a larger-than-life Rocky statue to the right of the steps where plenty of folks pose for photos.\u00a0 So there are three important photo ops here.\u00a0 You are supposed to get a photo actually running up the steps, a photo at the tops with your arms raised high, and a photo with the statue.\u00a0 You got all that?\u00a0 It was so fun to watch everyone, they should totally put a webcam on this like they have on Abbey Road<\/a> in London.<\/p>\n

Then we headed back toward our hotel and stopped at the Liberty Bell Center<\/a>.\u00a0 Crowds were light on Tuesday at 4:15.\u00a0 We also saw the Presidents’ House<\/a>, one of the precursors to the White House.\u00a0 Washington and Adams both lived here for a period.\u00a0 The original house has been long demolished, but excavation has revealed some of the original foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Took the train from Union Station (DC) to Philadelphia’s Historic 30th Street Station.\u00a0 Wow, had no idea the Philly station was so cool.\u00a0 Great architecture, huge war memorial statue, old-fashioned flipping sign. Once in Philadelphia, we dropped of our bags at the hotel and took the PHLASH trolley to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.\u00a0 Diana […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}