An East Coast Birthday

The last time we were on vacation for my birthday was...a couple years ago. We were in Gulf Shores, Alabama. I think I really did enjoy this 17th birthday of mine, despite what seemed as a mundane start. We stayed overnight in Philadelphia so that we could see Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. We got in at two in the morning, so it was a really, really late start. We didn't get out of the hotel until noon. However, we did manage to see both attractions, so it kind of worked out (more on that later).

On our way there, we walked through Philly and came across this giant old chess/Sorry! board. Philly is a charming city, but I personally did not like it. The air is horrible with a lot of smog and smoke from cigarettes. As you can see from the pictures below, it was a group effort to get Small Man up onto the Sorry! piece...

Independence Hall was really neat! However, be warned that you do need tickets to see the room where they signed the Declaration of Independence. We didn't know that so we didn't get to see the room, but there were other exhibits that didn't need tickets that we checked out and they were interesting. One building was the American Philosophical Society; they had a Thomas Jefferson exhibit with his original desk and draft of the Declaration of Independence. All I'm going to say is that men had really beautiful handwriting in the 18th century... but it's still hardly legible! (Also, no photos were allowed so I don't have any again, sorry!) The Liberty Bell was cool to see and had a 30 minute or so wait. It was smaller than I expected, but then again a lot of things have been smaller than I have expected (like the Hope Diamond).

Because we left the hotel so late, we didn't finish seeing everything until around three-ish, and then on our way out of Philly we stopped...for Philly Cheese Steaks (my mom, not me!). The place was called Sonny's Cheese Steaks in the Old City. You can find 'em on Yelp!. We hit a lot of traffic driving back to New Jersey to return our rental car and they ended up being closed. Luckily they had options for late-birds like us. Then we ran our butts off in order to make it to New York in time for our Serendipity reservation- and my birthday dinner. 

The frozen hot chocolate was divine I tell you. Absolutely divine. I won't hype it up any more than that or it may fail to meet expectations. We started with one (top right) and ended with nothing (bottom right). Everyone loved it. Even my brothers, who are devout and pious McDonald's devotees, like it, as well as the food at Serendipity 3 in general. After dinner we proceeded to order dessert... too much dessert. Needless to say, we walked the mile back to our hotel. And, just a note, make a reservation or you'll be stuck in a two hour-or-longer line. 

We sang "First Time in Forever" ("Frozen" reference, anyone?)  or whatever that song it called, and ended up with the lyrics "and for the first time in forever, I'm...going to be alone" because next year I'm going to college. HA it was a little sad but too funny. I liked this birthday. And I think I'm going to miss my family... a little.