Saturday, July 29, 2017

Philadelphia in the Day Time

I Woke up about 7:30 AM, and we all went down at 8:00 to Spread Bagelry, where we had bagel sandwiches (I had the egg white, with a whole wheat everything bagel.) It was pretty different from commons food, for sure. Commons food wasn't too bad, but having the same selection day in and day out started to get a little old. I'm sure during the school year they have more options though.

After eating, we walked back to the hotel to brush teeth and get whatever we needed. I was surprised at how different the weather was from Nashville - I might actually be able to wear a jacket outside here!

Turns out I was able to, because it started raining on the way over to UPenn and stayed grey the rest of the day.

First impression of UPenn.
The walk over for our tour was pretty quick, and we arrived with some time to spare. I was struck immediately by the brick architecture and detailed stonework. I could pretty easily tell it was an Ivy League school.

We first had a presentation from an admissions officer named Kim. It was in Irvine auditorium - an impressive, grand place that reminded me of the inside of a church. According to the pamphlet we got, it houses an 11,000 pipe organ, and a bunch of shows and performances are shown there. It looked like a good place for it.

Our tour guide's name was Louis Lin, and eh was from Merrick, New York. He's a rising sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences studying political science and health in the community. He was a nice guy, and pretty helpful too. He wasn't able to answer my question on whether Penn had a mountain bike team, but he was able to answer everything else for me. I was really interested in the engineering/business school dual major, and it turns out Elon Musk actually graduated from that program! That was a cool thing to learn, as Elon Musk is someone I personally respect.
Plenty of trees here.

The tour took us around campus, as tours often do, and Penn's campus was really nice. It wasn't a national arboretum like Vanderbilt, but it had plenty of trees anyways. The brick buildings and walkways were also cool to see, because a lot of the time on the West Coast there just isn't that amount of red brick anywhere. I liked the feel of it. I don't know if I'll be applying to UPenn, but I have another year to decide that.

After the tour, we went to bookstore and looked around. We didn't buy anything, but we found some stuff that we might want to buy later. We then went next door to lunch at a restaurant called Cosí. The portion sizes were a little weird (their mac & cheese was smaller than their salad) and everything came in to go containers no matter what, but it was still pretty good food anyways.

We then had a quick jaunt over to the hotel, and I got to read the WSJ a little bit in the lobby before we headed over to the Eastern State Penitentiary.

The Eastern State Penitentiary looked like a castle. High stone walls, towers on every corner and a massive imposing gate all added to the effect. It was pretty cool. It closed in 1970, but reopened as a museum in 1994.
Just another college tour, but I'm thinking of applying here now.
Inside the penitentiary

Inside, it was a little less castle-like and more like a prison. Our tour guide's name was Angelina, and she was pretty good in showing us around. We got to see cell blocks, learn about the prison's history, and we even visited Al Capone's cell during his brief stay there. It turns out it was a pretty nice cell. Not sure I would want to stay there, per se, but it's better than a regular prison cell for sure.

After touring around the penitentiary for two and a half hours, we went to Spruce Street Harbor park, and walked around a little bit. We got some food in my case but coffee and ice cream in everyone else's case. While we ate and drank, we sat down on a barge that was tied to the shore that acted as an extension of the park, which was pretty cool. When we decided to move on, we found a big connect-4 board and I challenged Maddie and Ms. Hansen to a few games. That was a lot of fun, as I grew up playing connect-4 with my dad.

RIP My Philly cheese steak, with a life span of about 5 minutes.
Oh yeah, baby.
When we had finished with a few games, we headed over to Jim's Steaks, an authentic Philly cheese steak place. It was really good. I wasn't sure about Philly cheese steaks going in because I hadn't had one before, but it was super good. I highly recommend it.

On our slow walk back to our car, we passed through some very classic, older looking neighborhoods that I really liked the look of. I think as a city, Philadelphia feels more like San Francisco than Nashville did (although they're all quite different). I really am enjoying the cooler weather here too, let me tell you.

After we had made it back to the car, we drove back to the hotel, parked the car, and walked a couple of blocks to the Penn bookstore to pick up a few souvenirs. I got a running t-shirt, and everyone else got some Penn gear too.
Hey look! They have bridges here too!
Beautiful sunset.
We wrapped up the day at the hotel, and tomorrow we go home! It was a great three weeks, but I think I'm pretty much ready to be back now. Still, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell tomorrow should be great.

1 comment:

  1. That's a great sunset photo! It does kind of have an SF feel to it.

    ReplyDelete