ALL M&I

In the morning we transferred to a lovely hotel right next to the Liberty Bell (which we visited); we also did a food tour which was quite poor – half an hour walk from the meeting place to first food, and very little of the food was “iconic” or even good!

But in the evening we took a short walk to the Chinese Lantern Festival that happened to be running during our visit; a lot like the Asian Lantern Festival that happened in Sanford Zoo in 2021 and 2022, but nicely different with its own style too – very colorful!

In the evening we headed to the Lincoln Financial Field stadium to watch English Premier team Newcastle play Aston Villa (and draw 3-3, so we watched a good amount of goals!); the stadium wasn’t too full which was good as we had chosen “fan zone” seats which turned out to be in an area where everyone stood for the whole game – so we moved (the final photo shows the Newcastle fan zone area from our different seats) …

After an overnight stop in Maryland (so we could check off that state) we returned to Philadelphia and into the city center; we decided that riding a “hop on hop off” open top bus would be the best way to see a lot of the city – and it was a great choice (though quite hot!); we also got off at “Love Park” (JFK Park) to get photos of the iconic sculpture …