Day 18 - Back In Philly

The day started out in glorious Williamsport, PA. We had decided to visit the Little League Museum, which is located next to the fields where they played the Little League World Series last week.


However, when we got to the museum around 11:00 the sign on the door said "Closed" even though their hours were from 10-5. Evidently, this is not busy season, so there were only two people scheduled to work the museum today, and one was going to be late and the other had a class to teach. The sign said they would be back at noon, so we instead when to check out the field. Turns out, there are actually 6 fields on the complex. It looked like 3 were used for games, and maybe the others were for practices. We were not allowed on the fields, which truly disappointed the boys, but I ended up jumping the fence and going on the main field thanks to an errant throw by one of the boys (name withheld to protect the innocent).

At around 11:30 we headed back up the museum to wait until noon, but we were in luck and the museum was open. It's not a large museum, and if they hadn't had an area where you could throw, hit and run we probably would have been done in about 15 minutes. After (AGAIN) buying stuff we don't need, we headed to a restaurant near the museum for a surprisingly good lunch. When done with lunch, we set up the "Mobile Command Center" for the 2.5 hour drive to Philly (ended up being a 3.5 hour drive thanks to traffic in the Philly area).

We settled into the hotel (Embassy Suites in the Museum part of town), we had a very difficult decision to make - which cheesesteak place would we go to for dinner? We were not heading to the Penn campus tonight, so Abner's was not on the table. However, we (or I) wasn't sure if we should go to Geno's, Pat's or Jim's. I consulted the handy Roadfood book, and opted for Pat's, the home of the original cheesesteak. I had been to Pat's before, but Debbie had not, and had no idea what the place was like. When I parked the car around the corner from Pat's she asked if the kids had their sweatshirts, assuming we were going to be dining in some air conditioned room. She had no idea that Pat's is a glorified food stand, where you walk up, order in "Soup Nazi" terms ("Wiz wit" - for those uninformed with the lingo of the Philly cheesesteak, that would get you a cheeseteak with cheese wiz and onions), and sit at a park bench to enjoy the food.




Here is what I went with (mushroom wiz with):



And the rest of the family:


Hungry yet? We finished dinner and decided to head to South Street to walk around and get some dessert. I found a spot around 3rd and South Street, and it was right in front of a Haagen Dazs. The kids wanted to just go there, but we insisted on trying to find something or someplace that we could not get at home. Wise decision, as we found the 2nd best dessert idea on the trip (nothing can beat the pie place). This was a frozen yogurt place called Phileo Yogurt where it is self serve with a bunch of flavors. You can fill your cup with as much or as little as you want, and put whatever toppings you want on it. You pay by the weight of your cup (I think it was $0.49/ounce). Debbie loved it, as she was able to make the perfect combination of yogurt and nuts, and the kids loved it as well.

We left South Street and headed back to the hotel, first driving around the Front Street/Penn's Landing area. Not really sure what we are going to do tomorrow, but we will end up at some point at the Penn campus. Also, because we haven't spent enough nights in hotels, we have very likely decided to extend the trip by one more night, so we can spend the entire day in Philly and not have to drive home late.