This was a trip that I’d been thinking of and talking about for a few years. After my tour around Lake Michigan in 2015, the only US states I had left to visit were Alaska and Delaware. Alaska makes sense as a stand-alone trip and while I don’t have anything planned, I do intend to get to it at some point. Delaware, however, seemed tricky on the surface. It’s tucked away on the east end of Maryland and not a popular tourist destination in and of itself (sorry, Delaware, just haven’t heard of you on many people’s bucket lists).
Friends have asked me, “how did you miss Delaware?” assuming that if I’d been to every other state out east, I’d surely have gone through Delaware at some point. I always argued that it’s not really on the way to anywhere else. So, what to do? Well, I hadn’t been to D.C. since I was in middle school and had never been to Philadelphia, so I figured I could plan a trip to those two and make Delaware a side trip from there. As I started planning, I realized that the train from Philadelphia to D.C. actually goes right through Wilmington, Delaware! So the trip was on.
But, let me backtrack one step. A former athlete of mine, Braden Bartlett, has caught the incurable travel bug and started exploring. When we were catching up awhile back, he even suggested we travel to SE Asia. That being a little ambitious for me at the moment, I suggested the west coast and Yosemite National Park–coupled with a run back up through Eugene and Portland so I could hit the NCAA nationals and (Cheney alum Hunter Veith) for a second year in a row. I was looking for a travel partner to keep expenses down (and I didn’t want to just replicate my 2017 trip to Portland exactly), but Braden had a commitment in Pennsylvania during that time. So, I brought up the idea of the Washington, Philly, Delaware trip I’d had in my back pocket for awhile. He was in and would just stay out east and meet me in Philly (he actually had a gap week to fill which he did in NYC with his mom, but that’s a story for him to tell).
With all our wondrous 2018 gadgets available, meeting up was a breeze. I tracked Braden down at the University of Pennsylvania campus on a Saturday afternoon. After checking into our airbnb, we walked back through Penn’s campus and then to downtown Philly. Dinner that night was, of course, cheesesteaks! We didn’t have a really specific agenda. It was basically just: what was open, how far away was it, etc. The two historical highlights were the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. I actually had to research it when I got home, but the Liberty Bell just gradually became a symbol of American freedom over decades. It’s not necessarily tied to any one historical event. Independence Hall, however, is where both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were debated and signed. For the first time ever, I was really able to put myself in the contemporary world of those involved–how big of a deal it was to say, “you know what, we should start our own country.” Those we simply call “founding fathers” were rebels who happened to win. Very impressive.
We ran up the Rocky steps, of course, which are just the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Be careful here. What I thought was a friendly fellow tourist offering to take my picture was actually a local expecting a tip in return after I had handed over my phone.
I scheduled a tour of Lincoln Financial Field where the Eagles play their home games. That makes my fourth NFL stadium tour. As impressive as it was, you can definitely tell the cost and age difference compared to something like the Cowboys stadium in Dallas. Oh, and not long after I was explaining to Braden that Eagles QB Carson Wentz and TE Zach Ertz helped me win a fantasy football league, they walked by our tour! Even our tour guide was flustered and said it was the first time one of her tours encountered players.
After that we raced to Eastern State Penitentiary and then to Reading Terminal Market, managing to reach each right before they closed. Eastern State Penitentiary is where Al Capone was jailed. I hadn’t really heard of it before, but it was in operation from 1829 until 1971 and hundreds of prisons around the world were modeled after it.
The simplest way to describe Reading Terminal Market might be to have you think of a food court in a mall, but without the mall. It’s also been around for over 100 years and used to be in conjunction with the Reading Railroad (like the one on the Monopoly board!). But instead of a bunch of chains with boring food, it’s more of a farmers’ market style with local vendors serving an array of food from all over the world.
It took us a day or two to really notice, but our airbnb seemed to be in a neighborhood with a significant Muslim population. When we tried to eat at a nearby Ethiopian place, it didn’t open until 8:00pm. I’m guessing those were just their Ramadan hours (Islamic holiday where they fast during the day; ended just a couple days after we left Philly). We were hungry and didn’t want to wait and found a gyro place (you’re pronouncing it wrong). The owner and operator here was a very friendly Pakistani gentleman who wouldn’t let us pay until after we finished eating. “You don’t like it, you don’t pay,” he said.
We ate. We paid. Little experiences like these add a lot to a trip and aren’t something you really think about beforehand.
Not to offend any Philadelphians, but Braden and I agreed that it didn’t necessarily have a distinct vibe as stark as, say, Boston does, or, more obviously, New York City does. It was just a city. And the public transportation wasn’t near as convenient or intuitive as other cities I’ve been in. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes I made on this whole trip was expecting it to be a breeze to get around from place to place on public transportation. Once we decided to go ahead and buy week passes (cheaper than three separate single-day passes), they weren’t active until the day after we bought them. We also concluded that the Philadelphia “accent” is just talking softly and mumbling. Almost no one we talked to, whether food service or public transportation workers, said words we could decipher. I mumble as well, but at least I mumble loudly!
After a few days, we took the regional train from Philly to Wilmington, Delaware trusting it was covered by our week pass. It wasn’t, so we had to pay cash on the train. It was only $8, but when we bought the pass it said it covered those trains. Again, it was just all kinds of confusing and inconsistent and the locals seemed confused by our confusion (hard to tell for sure because we didn’t know what they were saying).
The Wilmington stop was really just to check Delaware off my list, but was also the place we needed to switch from the Pennsylvania transit system to a Greyhound bus to Baltimore (booked the day before–again, I was way off on ease of travel on this trip). We had a few hours so we got a Lyft to a cafe with good reviews for lunch near a park that we walked through beforehand. Now, with all of our baggage, we came up with a simple system of taking turns guarding our stuff while the other guy walked around unencumbered. Sounds silly, but worked great for us as we were both content to sit and read (me) or draw (Braden) while the other explored. At the end of the park, I came to a small zoo for which I paid the $7 entry primarily because I wasn’t having any luck finding a restroom elsewhere in the park. The zoo was… not good. About a 200 yard stretch; probably a third of the cages empty, and the animals didn’t appear to be in the best of shape. It was kind of depressing.
A bus followed by another Lyft got us to our airbnb in Baltimore. Lyfts are obviously more expensive than taking a local bus, but splitting it between two people makes it pretty reasonable for the convenience of not having to find the right bus stop, figure out if the route goes by your destination, etc. The only real goal for us in Baltimore was to hang out at the harbor as that seems to be the main active area. On our way there, however, we walked right by Camden Yards. It was an hour or so before game time and we had scalpers approaching us. We blew them off, but even though I’m not a baseball fan, checking out this iconic stadium seemed like a fun idea. We took our time at the harbor and ate at an Irish place (where, we would later realize, Braden lost his debit card), then walked back to the ballpark. We bought a couple $15 tickets off the scalpers (matching the lowest price the box office had). I was nervous whether or not they’d be legit, but I have enough friends who have used scalpers before without any issues, so, apparently, that’s just what you do. We got in no problem and it was even free bobblehead night! We got bobbleheads of… of some player whose name I can’t remember. Dylan something? I pack light so mine ended up staying behind at the airbnb.
I hadn’t been to an MLB game since probably middle school and I just don’t follow the game, but Camden Yards probably has to win the award for unexpected highlight of the trip. When you come in off of street level, you’re already at the top of the outfield wall as the playing field is below street level. Then the right field lights are on top of a massive building across the walkway. Not knowing anything, it looks as if back in the day, the ball field was on one side of the street and the warehouse on the other and now that street is just permanently blocked off and it’s all part of the facility. Again, I’m not a baseball guy and we were only there from about the 2nd through 7th innings, but the atmosphere was so cool and actually got me thinking about going back to a Royals game in Kansas City for the first time in probably 25 years or more.
We left the game with the intention of quickly hitting a CVS for some breakfast foods we could eat at the airbnb. This was where Braden realized he no longer had his debit card. We were certain he dropped it at the stadium as he used it to order our bus tickets to DC for the following day. So we headed back and I hung outside the stadium while he convinced them to let him back in to look for it, but he came back empty handed. He was able to shut it off from his phone so not a huge deal, but definitely stressful.
The next morning, with all our luggage back in hand, we took shifts walking around the now-less-crowded harbor before heading to our Greyhound to Washington D.C. It was at dinner that night that Braden realized his phone had remembered his debit card info and he had paid for the bus tickets without having the physical card itself. He called the place we ate at in Baltimore and, sure enough, they had his card and just no way to contact him. He had them destroy it and that gave him the closure he needed to relax about it.
As we ran out of daylight that first evening in D.C., we walked the whole of the National Mall past kickball and softball games and the countless other tourists. Even though I had been here in middle school, I really had no memory of the vastness of it. Looking on a map, everything is right there together. The US Capitol building is on one end of the Mall, the Lincoln Memorial is on the other end, with the Washington Monument near the middle. But it’s more than two miles from end to end! For our three days in D.C. the overwhelming theme was that everything was farther away than it seemed and everything took way longer to get to and explore than we expected. Even after we felt we started taking that into account, we kept being wrong. I don’t have a FitBit or anything, but if the step-counter on my iPhone is to be trusted, during the eight days of my trip I walked nearly 200,000 steps for over 73 miles.
Thursday morning we took a tour of the Capitol building which was followed by an underground walkway to the Library of Congress where we saw a Gutenberg bible and what remains of Thomas Jefferson’s library. I didn’t realize that he had the largest private book collection in the United States at the time–well over 6000 books (though more than half of those were lost in an 1851 fire). We went by the Supreme Court and the National Botanic Garden before finding a fancy Mexican restaurant for lunch. The fact that all the museums on the Mall are free to enter was balanced out by how expensive the food in DC is. After lunch we hit the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives–where the very faded original Declaration of Independence and Constitution reside, and, another quick, unexpected highlight–Ford’s Theater, where Lincoln was assassinated. I never did learn (even online just now) how much of the building is original, but the theater has undergone substantial renovations over the years. The highlight was simply the National Park Service ranger who did a spectacular job recounting the events before, during, and after Booth shot Lincoln. He spoke to a crowd of us from the stage. It’s a much smaller place than I expected and has been back in use as a theater since the 1960s though the Presidential box remains unused.
From there we walked by the White House, though you can’t get very close to it and the east and west wings are obscured by trees. Braden tried to contact our Congressman about a tour back in April, but two months advanced notice isn’t enough–apparently it’s more like nine if you want to secure a spot.
We went back by the Lincoln Memorial briefly and continued walking around the Tidal Basin to research the MLK, FDR, and Jefferson Memorials. Again, lots of walking! Our last full day in D.C. consisted of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Museum of Natural History, and Museum of American History, which was actually more to do with American culture and innovation, and not really anything to do with the political history of the US. Then we caught the Metro across (or under, I guess) the Potomac River to Arlington National Cemetery where we visited JFK’s grave and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We actually got there in time to see a local school involved in a wreath-laying ceremony with the guards. It was all very somber and fascinating and probably the closest US equivalent to the guards at Buckingham Palace in London.
Our last nice dinner of the trip was probably the best. We ate at a place called Founding Farmers in the Foggy Bottom district just west of the White House. It says it’s locally-sourced food and farmer-owned and the food was great.
I mentioned a lack of foresight on my part in navigating public transportation in this region. Never was that more apparent than when we had to book a more-than-three-hour bus ride back to Philadelphia to catch the return flight home. It was cheaper than flying out of D.C., but a big lesson from this trip was the differing priorities between the version of you that books the trip and the version of you that is actually in the middle of the trip. Sitting at home on my computer, it made sense to save as much money as possible. Once in the situation, however, I would have gladly paid the up-charge to avoid the massive inconvenience. The same goes for the time of day of flights. It’s probably worth that $50 to have your flight leave at 3:00pm instead of 6:00am.
Anyway, our bus didn’t leave until that Saturday evening, but we had to be checked out of our airbnb so we had all our stuff with us. Braden found an app that was essentially airbnb for stowing your luggage for the day. Local businesses offer up their space to stash your stuff for the day. It was $20, but basically bought us a whole additional day in D.C.
It still flew by, but we went to the Georgetown area for lunch and walked to the college campus and then up to Embassy Row with all the impressive homes and offices for the worlds’ diplomats in Washington D.C.
The final hours of our trip were the least eventful, but still offered us a learning experience. Our flight was at 6:00am on Sunday out of Philadelphia. We left D.C. at 6:00pm on Saturday on a bus. Then we had to catch the regional train (this was covered by the week pass we bought at the start of the trip). This put us at the airport around 10:20pm. We weren’t exactly sure what the protocol was for just hanging out there all night, but it didn’t seem to be a problem. Even after the last flights came in around 1:00am, there were two or three other people who seemed to be in the same situation as us. Braden managed to sleep a little, but I can just never manage in those situations. My goal was to nap on the plane to Atlanta, but even though I sat relaxed with my eyes closed the entire flight, I never fell asleep. I’m not an insomniac by any means. I’m just spoiled and can’t sleep unless conditions are near ideal. Okay, so maybe I’m a circumstantial insomniac. Is that a thing?
So, yeah, another trip in the books. Nothing official set yet for the next one but several ideas floating around. A couple other notes from the trip: bring more charging cables! Because so many of my devices can use the same USB wall charger, I just brought the one. But when you’re using them during the day and charging them at night, only one thing at a time can charge. I started constantly putting my phone into airplane mode during the day which helped immensely.
Finally, I just want to reiterate that it may be a small world, but we’re even smaller. There’s so much to do and so little time to do it. Get moving!
I posted some more pics here if you’re interested.