Hellooo and happy Wednesday! Today I wanted to post a quick recap of Kenny's and my trip to Philadelphia this past weekend. I'll preface this by saying if you're looking for recommendations on what to do in Philly, then this is probably not the post for you - we were only there for a day so we didn't go too many places, but I still wanted to capture our trip in a blog post!
We were in Philadelphia for a Dua Lipa concert - Kenny got tickets for Christmas! I was excited to visit Philly since we had never been, but it was definitely not a place we'll be rushing back to... No offense if you love Philly or you're from there, I just don't really enjoy many big cities! Plus, it was absolutely FREEZING while we were there, so we didn't get to spend as much time outside walking around as we would liked to have.
We stayed at the Residence Inn by the airport which was five-ish miles from downtown, and I thought it was a great location. It was nice to be able to have a place to park, and then catch a quick ride into the city. We really liked it there, the rooms we stayed in was like a mini-suite so it had a kitchen and a living room area and it was really nice.
The concert was at the Wells Fargo Center at 7:30, and we headed downtown around 3:00 to experience downtown a bit before going to the show. We went to Reading Terminal Market first, and it was so cool there! There are tons of shops, restaurants, grocers, and bakeries to browse.
Luhv Vegan Deli is what brought us to the market - I had made a note of several vegan restaurants that looked good (vegan food is big in Philly!), and that's what struck our fancy. It was a popular spot and a lot of their options were already sold out, but they still had some good options available!
Kenny ordered the "Rachel" which had corned beef, coleslaw, 1000 island dressing, and provolone on rye and it was SO good! I got the turkey hoagie which I honestly did not like at all - it was very bready, dry, and pretty flavorless. I wish I had gotten the same thing as Kenny because his was delicious!
The one downside of the market was that it was super crowded. It was kind of annoying to navigate and basically impossible to find a place to sit and eat if you got food. We found a bar to sit at but got kicked out by one of the employees, so we ended up leaving the market and walking to the Fashion District Mall to eat - we still had to stand there, but we did at least find a counter at the food court to lean on. 😂
After we ate, we walked into a few stores in the mall, and then ventured back out to try to catch a few historical landmarks. We stopped at the Declaration House and were trying to read about it and APPRECIATE HISTORY, but we got cussed out and run off by a delightfully strange person guarding a nearby bus stop who I don't think knew that Philadelphia is supposed to be the city of brotherly love. 😂
After "getting the fu*k away" as requested, we headed to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. I don't know why we didn't know that the Liberty Bell was inside, but it makes sense that it is! There was a pretty long line waiting to see it, so we ended up skipping waiting to see it because it was insanely cold out and the wind was unbelievable - I truly might have died had we waited outside any longer. 😂 We checked out Independence Hall and the surrounding area, then ended up walking back to the market just to have somewhere to be back inside until it was time for the concert.
Back at the market, we got a couple of cookies at Famous 4th Street Cookie Company, which was a nice treat! I also got a random side of lo mein at Sang Kee Peking Duck because I hadn't finished my sandwich earlier and I wanted to have a little extra something before we headed to the concert, and it was really good!
Around 6:00 we called a ride to the Wells Fargo Center for the concert (the doors opened at 6:30). Once we got inside, we found our seats which were so good! We pretty much only get general admission tickets because we (especially Kenny) like to be right in the middle of the action, but I really appreciated having actual seats this time because we didn't have to worry about keeping our spots if we wanted to leave to grab a drink or something.
After finding our seats, we walked around the stadium a bit. I got a vodka soda which was somehow the best one I've ever had?! I don't know what it was about it, but it was so good, ha! I'm gonna get some New Amsterdam vodka because that's the "official" vodka of the stadium and maybe that's what I liked so much. We'll see! Kenny also got a really cool tee shirt from one of the merch stands.
The show was so much fun! Lolo Zouai was the first opener and she was really energetic and fun. Caroline Polachek had a set next and her music isn't super my jam, but she was still good!
Dua Lipa's set was fantastic as expected. The show started with little intros for each of her dancers on the screens behind the stage, which I thought was really cool. The show was super high energy, the dancers were amazing and I loved Dua Lipa's outfits (costumes?) I didn't take any photos, but Kenny took some cool videos! The photo above was the best screenshot I could get from one of them. 😂
Can you believe we got a photo with Dua Lipa? So amazing. 😂 I saw on YouTube that somebody filmed her entire show and posted it on the off chance you're interested in seeing a cell phone video of the whole thing, haha.
My only critique is that the show was so choreographed that she never really took time to talk to the crowd and make it seem a little more personal, which is always something I enjoy at shows. It was still amazing, though! At the end there was a bunch of tiny rainbow confetti which was so cool... but the Virgo in me could only think about what a nightmare that must be to clean up. 😂
There were a bunch of bootleg merch salesmen outside of the stadium after the concert, and Kenny wheeled and dealed with a couple of them to get
tee shirts, but they ended up giving him the wrong sizes, but one of
them was free so I guess he can't be too mad... I wouldn't have hung around and dealt
with that, though. 😂
After the show, we walked over to Xfinity Live which is basically a big hub between the Wells Fargo Center, Citizens Bank Park, Lincoln Financial Field that has bars and restaurants and entertainment. It's a great spot to hang out after a show and wait out the rush for ride share services. We got some pizza that looked amazing but was somehow not good at all, but it was better than nothing. 😂
After about a billion tries, I was able to snag us a Lyft back to our hotel, and we were so excited to go to SLEEP! The next morning we had loose plans to grab brunch somewhere, but we slept in pretty late so we decided we'd rather hit the road and get home to Roxy!
That's pretty much it for our trip to Philly! Like I said, quick turnaround, we were basically only there for the concert! If it had been warmer I would have liked to spend more time sightseeing, but we didn't have too much spare time anyway - we still had fun and made great memories!
xoxx, Laura
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