PENNSYLVANIA

So I arrived last night into the beautiful state of California where smog is our humidity :) My family and I ventured across the country to Pennsylvania for a Falcioni Family Reunion. We decided to make this our vacation and see the great state of Pennsylvania for all its worth. Boy did we milk every moment out of this trip!

We departed from John Wayne Airport around 9:30 Wednesday morning. We arrived into the Philadelphia Airport around 9:30pm (Eastern Time) and a shuttle picked us up to take us to the airport.

We quickly realized this was going to be a long flight and discovered that the SkyMall magazines tucked away in the seats had Sudoku puzzles and Crossword puzzles, these kept us very busy on each flight we took.

Once we arrived to the airport around 10:15ish, we realized we were all starving. We unloaded our luggage in our rooms and off we went to Ruby Tuesdays. I have always wanted to go there - we have commercials for them here, but as far as I know we don't have any of them in southern california (if we do, they are hiding). It was great, we closed the place down and returned back to our hotel.

Thursday morning we all gathered in the lobby for an unbelievable breakfast! It had everything you could every imagine to eat. There was an omelet bar and a cafe with makings for oatmeal, bagels, pastries, yogurt, fresh fruit, bacon, sausage, muffins, all kinds of juices, coffee and so much more. It was great! We then departed from the hotel to see the sights of PHILLIDELPHIA! I had no idea what a treat this was going to be. The weather was great - although it did rain and drizzle quite a bit throughout the day. The overcast weather really cut the heat - and to be honest I was a bit chilly for most of the day.

We went to Independence Hall and saw the Liberty Bell - which was such a huge piece of history and to be right up close to it was amazing!

After going to see the Liberty Bell and the Independence Hall, my mother told us that Pretzels are kind of a big deal in Philly, so we had to feast on some pretzels with mustard.

We also went to the US Mint which was AMAZING!!! I am a coin collector myselft - so to see where all of the production happens was fascinating! I absolutely loved it.....I could have spent all day there! I don't have any pictures unfortunately from the inside, we had to leave all camera's outside before we entered the mint - security was pretty tight here, so we couldn't bring much of anything inside.

After visiting the US Mint, we travelled over a few blocks to the "Best Philly Cheese Steak Place in Town". One of the locals recommended this place to us as being the best in town. These are the cheese steaks they serve at Philly's & Eagles games....so we knew we were in for a real treat! We arrived at "Campos" and Catherine asked Mrs. Campos herself what the authentic way to eat a Philly Cheese Steak is - we were informed that in order to have an authentic Cheese Steak - it has to be made with cheese-wiz (believe it or not). Needless to say I broke my P90x diet for the day and indulged in a cheese steak for myself. I was the only one who consumed the entire thing - it was hilarious! This sandwich was AMAZING! It was soooo good, I wish I could have taken one home.