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| Sunday we ate at the hotel and drove up the coast. First stop, Margate, NJ to visit Lucy, the 65-foot-high, Margate Elephant. We toured the inside of the 120-year-old pachyderm, but were unable to go up top, due to construction. |
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| We were pretty hungry after touring the inside of an elephant, so Philadelphia, with its abundant cheese steaks and pork sandwiches, beckoned. We got up there in time for a late lunch, and headed straight for Tony Luke's. Alas, Tony Luke's is apparently closed Sundays. So we drove a few blocks away to Jim's, also closed. We gave up that nonsense and headed to the Italian Market and its nearby cheese steak eden. |
| Here's what we expected: "Hey, paisan'-- you wanna try some fresh calzone? Here's what we got: "Hey asshole-- get the hell outta da way!" Granted, we came after normal market hours, but it was really a dump, and the people were not particularly friendly. Trash everywhere. I'm not being entirely fair-- that picture isn't of the area, and it wasn't the best time to visit. But it was pretty seedy. |
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| We warily parked our car and went to Geno's for a cheese steak and a pork sandwich. The cheese steak was tasty, but we were both unimpressed-- the native snobbery insists that Cheez Wiz be used, and it just wasn't as good as a non-famous cheese steak with provolone. |
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| We checked into the very nice and affordable Crowne Plaza and walked to the Franklin Institute, where we saw a 3-D movie about space travel. Maddie's first non-flinching 3-D movie-- she spent much of the time grabbing at pizza slices and space shuttles coming at her, and greeting approaching shapes: "Hello, square. Hello, asteroid." Cute, and much better than the "daddy, get me the hell out of here" that we were used to with 3-d movies in the past. We also walked through a human heart model, visited the steam engine lab, the grossology exhibit (gooey internal stuff), electricity, and the coral reef IMAX film. Excellent museum, easily the best one for kids that we've seen. |
| For dinner, we picked three restaurants in the area, and the first one we came to was actually open, no line, and great food. It was Monks, a pub with Belgian beer and food. I had the Ghent Burger, which had broccoli di rabe, garlic, and some cheese.Sensational. The frites were OK, but they came with a bourbon garlic mayo that was amazing. The beer was wonderful, and even Maddie's chicken fingers were about the best we'd ever tasted. |
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| The tactless reader might well ask, "Mike, how can you eat all this fatty food and maintain your girlish figure?" And well you might ask. But you'd be sorry you did. For I managed to keep my weight down by getting Cheez Wiz, a dairy product despite its questionable spelling, on that cheese steak. Being lactose intolerant, that (shall we say) hastened the processing of that day's food intake. A small price to pay. |