Visited Philadelphia

2:04 AM (of Tuesday, August 6th 2024)

Today is Monday, August 5th 2024 and I stayed in Philadelphia from yesterday (Sunday) until today (Monday). I went there with my parents, and it was a 3 hour drive from our home in Virginia to Philadelphia. One complaint I have is that I would have preferred to go there with a girlfriend rather than with my parents. Other than that, I thought it was an okay trip. The hotel we stayed at was the Hampton Inn, and it was nice and well kept, the breakfast provided ample amounts of vegan food.

Yesterday we just walked around and took the Hop On and Hop Off bus. Again, I wish I had a girlfriend to sit next to on the bus rather than no one, since my parents sat in their own aisle. I listened to some music on my earphones while the tour guide gave a tour and description of the places we passed by. For lunch we ate at HipCityVeg, a place that Mary and I ate at a few nights ago in Washington D.C., apparently there were a few of them in Philadelphia, we ate at the one closest to us.

Yesterday we went up the Rocky steps and took a picture in front of the Rocky statue. It started to rain heavily, so we bought some ponchos that someone was selling nearby so that we wouldn't get wet.

Later we went back to the hotel. I worked out at the hotel gym with my dad. There wasn't much equipment, so we just used whatever was available. I showed my dad this app called BoostCamp, which has workout plans in there, and to just pick a workout plan, and do that. I didn't do any workouts from the app, and just did my own thing, doing a bunch of different barbell exercises. For dinner we just ate the snacks we brought from home, and also stopped by the run down grocery store across the street.

The Google Maps said there was a 7-11 nearby, and I wanted to visit it, so my dad and I walked a few blocks, but couldn't find it. It said it was just across this one street, but it wasn't. We turned around only after a few blocks because it felt very unsafe walking outside at night. The streets looked pretty rundown, and there was a bunch of homeless people everywhere. There was also poop and garbage right on the sidewalks. Thankfully we didn't have anyone approaching us at night, but in the afternoon yesterday as we were just walking, there were a few homeless people that called out to us and asked us to give them something. There was a woman who called me out specifically, I couldn't understand what she said though, my parents couldn't either, but she was very loud and kept inciting me.

We encountered a lot of tourists like French, British, Vietnamese, and German people, I knew where they were from because they didn't speak English to each other. I hope they had a good experience in America, but yeah I don't think Philadelphia gave them a good impression. I didn't have a good impression from Philadelphia. It's a cool city for sure, the buildings and architecture is immaculate, it's just very run down. The entire city felt bleak and hopeless. I wouldn't even know what the issues would be in Philadelphia nor how to solve them. Maybe it was the weather in the city too, it being hot didn't feel great.

Today we visited the Liberty Bell, and that was pretty much it. It can be pretty expensive to park in Philadelphia ($50 for overnight parking), so we opted for just walking most places. Walking back and forth from the Liberty Bell was where we encountered poop on the sidewalks. We were walking in a main street too, one that you could see the City Hall building from, its most iconic building I think, and there was poop on the sidewalk and it smelled. Not a good look for Philadelphia.

After that, we drove back home. I put on some audiobooks by Blinkist while on the way back. I pretty much never used the app much before today, but I was able to put on a few books as we drove back, since there was nothing else to do. I hopefully learned some things that I apply to my daily life.

When we got back home in Virginia, I just did some work, and then just watched a bunch of South Park. That was pretty much my entire day today and yesterday. I'm very tired and sleepy now.