"That town smells like cheesesteaks."

What is my girl Meredith talking about? Philly, of course! Thanks to some extra funding for trainings at work, we got to attend the ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association) Conference in Philadelphia last month.
We left early in the morning

and traveled all day

through Dallas (we got to ride the Sky Train around the outside of the airport- Cool!)

and finally arrived in Philly, only to fear for our lives! The shuttle service we paid to take us from the airport to the hotel, chosen for it's cheapness, must search DMV records for speeding violators when making it's employment decisions. The streets in Philly are super narrow, mostly one way, and filled to the gills with cars, bicyclists and pedestrians (on a Wednesday night!) and I think our shuttle driver was oblivious to all of them. One of the most terrifying hours of my life, because, of course, we were the last off the van. Once our shaking had subsided, we met up with a fourth colleague (who was lucky enough to book the LAST direct flight to Philly) and started walking, looking for a restaurant since we were all STARVING!

We went into the first restaurant we found, a teeny shoe-box sized Italian place that, aside from a wilty salad with suspicious looking tomatoes and even more suspicious looking chefs, provided delicious but pricey pasta.

The next day we walked the mile (9 blocks or so?) from our hotel to the convention center and were glad we were all able to do it together. We passed some very interesting sites, some historical, including the National Constitution Center

and the final resting place of Benjamin Franklin (located directly behind our hotel)

and some not so pleasant, like all of the garbage out on the curb (apparently, Thursday is garbage day in downtown Philly), some very savory characters and a couple of tattoo shops I feared I might catch hepatitis just from looking at. We also walked past China town which, will sporting some cool architecture, smelled terribly of fish and wasn't in the safest location so we didn't linger.

Once at the convention, we stood in a horrendously long line to check in and obtain our materials and then caught some sessions and checked some of the vendors.

After an exhausting day of sessions and trying to get used to the two hour time change, we left the convention a little bit early to fit in some site seeing (because all of the historical sites close by five!).

We stopped inside the cemetery where Ben Franklin was buried on our way back to the hotel since it closed at four.

We admired some of the very neat, very old grave markers. As you can see, they are very degraded. Most of the etching is gone. We asked the caretaker of the cemetery what the stones were made of and why the were so eroded. He answered that they were made of something called Pennsylvania blue marble, which is found only in that region. Even though it is marble, it doesn't weather too well outside (does fine indoors), which was compounded by the acid rain caused by all of the coal burning factories in Philadelphia over the years.

We stopped for a quick pose underneath this tree while holding our breath, not to eliminate our stomachs (like Tristan has one) but to avoid the overwhelming smell of dog poo surrounding it.

Next we visited the Liberty Bell.

and Independence Square.

 Independence Hall itself was closed so we didn't get to see where the Declaration of Independence was actually signed but we saw one copy of it

in one very dark building where a flash wasn't allowed (damages the document).
We also found this cool old ink well that was likely very much like the one used to sign the Declaration.