Day Thirty-two

Philadelphia is an odd city. It has this real cute feel of old colonial charm to it, which you see in the buildings etc, but also in people wandering about dressed in costume. All the time. You'll be wandering down some street and some period-dressed guy will wander round the corner. I... assume they're tourist guides, or, um, something. *shrug* Hopefully.

Yesterday was my get-to-know-the-city day. And it was pretty wet for a lot of it, and me in shorts and thongs wasn't too happy about this. I stayed inside places as much as possible, which wasn't terribly good for getting to know the area :P. It was pretty clear by nighttime though, so I went out on the town. Maybe it was having come from New York's nightlife, but Philly wasn't all that fun out there. Maybe it heats up later on, but I had to get back to the hostel for the 2am lockdown. The district I'm in is great though, Old City, has streets of great restaurants that ALL smell delicious.

Today I headed out to the Italian Market. The first block or two was pretty Italian, but it quickly turned into a Chinese Market, and then oddly, a sort of Latino Market. At the very end of the market area is Pat's, which is the home of the original famous Philadelphia Cheesesteak, so I HAD to try one. It's, um, just steak and cheese. For some reason I thought there would be more to it. Like some sort of special ingredient like the Colonel's eleven herbs and spices. But no, it's just steak and cheese, in a roll. ...Interesting, not the sort of thing worth having regularly, but with Cheese Whiz cheese it was pretty good :). It's basically liquid cheese. You could have your steak with a number of different cheeses.

Ooo! I have tickets to Cirque du Soleil on Tuesday night! A show called Kooza is in town. I've never been to an actual Cirque do Soleil show :). Wheee! I wanna go to the Las Vegas one too.

The other place I did today was the Mutter Museum, which was disturbing, to say the least. It's a medical museum for diseases, disfigurements, abnormalities, etc. The have sections on conjoined twins, a wall full of real skulls - another section of real skulls with either bulletholes, or where the skull had been deliberately cut open fo rsome reason, preserved human remains, preserved brains cut open, a section dedicated to things that have been removed from people's bodies, etc etc. I'm usually fine with that kind of thing, but a lot of this was real - and a lot were wax models. It was hard to tell which was which sometimes :P. They didn't allow photos, alas.