We live just an hour and a half from Philadelphia, but for some reason it took us a year and a half to make it there! We finally found a free Saturday and decided that Josh and Bryn would play hookie from work and school that Friday and we'd make it an overnight trip. Josh has accumulated plenty of hotel points from all his business travelling, so we used his points to get a nice hotel right in the heart of Philly. We had such a great weekend as a family!
Our first stop was the Adventure Aquarium, which is technically right across the river from Philly in Camden, New Jersey. This was our main expense of the trip and we loved it!
The girls loved the mermaids - even more than the sea life! I guess we should have expected that with two little girls!
Penguins and cheesy poses
The coolest part of the aquarium was the hippo exhibit. It was amazing to be so close to the hippos and to see them swim around under water and eat their bok choy for lunch :)
Josh is a big-time animal lover and he was in heaven!
So cool.
The shark tunnel was another favorite spot.
Tate was too busy to notice the sea life. It was in Philly that Tate discovered his little pointer finger fit perfectly in his nose. Oh boy.
After the aquarium had lunch at Dalessandro's Steaks - which came highly recommended for "the best Philly Cheesesteaks". (The picture doesn't look that good, but they were delicious!)
Then we checked into the hotel and enjoyed the pool!
Swimming at the hotel pool is always even cooler to the girls than whatever place we are actually visiting!
We stayed at the Sheraton and we had a great view of the city. It was right next to the new Philadelphia LDS temple and next to several other Philadelphia landmarks. Because it was a central location we were able to walk everywhere we went and skip the hassle of city parking. Three cheers for that!
In the evening we walked to Chinatown and had dinner at Nan Zhou Hand Drawn Noodle House. It had over 1,000 positive reviews on Yelp, so we figured it was a safe bet :) We really loved it and so did the kids.
Nighty night sweet girls! Day 1 was definitely a success!
I've seen a couple of other events at other places, but this was my first time in here. It was amazing! Great venues in Atlanta, it's smaller than those bigger places but it is still a fair sized venue. Food was great and I think it's recently renovated - it didn't seem old or anything.
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