The Carey Family: My trip to Philly and New York

In August, I was fortunate enough to be able to make a trip to see Natalie and her family in Philadelphia...ALL BY MYSELF!!!!! Jim had the week off and was able to stay home with the kids so I could go. We had a great time together and I hope we will be able to do more sister trips in the future.

I arrived on Monday evening and we headed to Natalie's gym to go to a BodyStep class. Seems like a really weird thing to do upon just arriving, unless you know me and my obsession with BodyStep and then, it seems perfectly normal. ;-) Great start to our trip. We then headed to Natalie's apartment where Taylor had dinner all ready for us when we got there.

On Tuesday, we spent the day in Philadelphia just seeing the sights. Taylor, Hannah and Maddie came with us until after lunch and then Taylor took them home so Natalie and I could make it to all our attractions a little faster. After seeing the sights of downtown Philly, including, of course, the Rocky steps, Natalie had an activity at the church for the primary. We got home from that at about 9:00 pm and then proceeded to plan the next day of activities in New York City.

ROCKY! And, yes, we did run up the steps just like Rocky!

Elfereth Alley...the shortest inhabited street.

Independence Hall and The Liberty Bell

The Love statue downtown Philly

Me and Benjamin Franklin on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania

The Love statue on the campus of University of Pennsylvania

On Wednesday, we left Philly at 4:30 am to head to New York. We planned on driving to Staten Island and take the ferry over to Manhattan, but somewhere along the way, our directions led us astray...not me...the directions. ;-) So, we just drove into Manhattan and parked for the day. It actually worked out better because we didn't have to worry about getting to the ferry in time to make the last one of the day after our show was over. New York is awesome! I loved every bit of our day there. There was so much to do and we managed to do a lot of it in just one day. We even got to see Mary Poppins at the end of our day and there is just nothing like Times Square at Midnight. I wish we could have stayed another day, but now it gives me the opportunity to visit again and take Jim with me. I think we made it back to Philly at about 2 am. We were pretty tired, but it was worth it.

The Manhattan Temple

View of Central Park from the Belvedere Castle

Cheesecake from Carnegie Deli

Natalie and I waiting for Mary Poppins to begin

After two days of pure running, we decided to just relax on Thursday. In the after noon, though, Hannah wanted to show me the zoo and all her favorite animals, so we went there for a couple of hours. The zoo in Philadelphia is really nice. My favorite part was feeding the Lorikeets...they just sat on our arms and drank their milk out of a little cup we held up to them. I think Natalie had three of them on her arm at once. Very fun.

The Lorikeets

Hannah was pretty excited about feeding the Lorikeets.

These are the two cutest monkeys I have ever seen!

Friday, Natalie and I went to the BodyPump/Step combo class that she goes to every week at the YMCA. Loved it! It was 1 1/2 hours of exercise at it's best. As you can see, I'm a bit of an exercise nut and pump and step are definitely my favorite classes. In fact, and don't tell my husband this, I booked a later flight so that I could go to this class because Natalie raves about it. We went downtown around lunch time that day so that I could try the famous Philly cheese steaks at Pat's and Geno's. These two places are right across the street from each other and have been featured on various food shows, so, in honor of Jim, I had to try both and see which one I liked the best. From there, it was almost time for me to head to the airport, but Natalie had to have me try one more Philadelphia treat...water ice or Italian ice. It was sort of like a slurpee, but thicker and not as good. I would take a slurpee over a water ice any day, but I just had to try it once.