The main tourist part of Philadelphia was on "lock down" today, as the presidential debate was being held at the National Constitutional Center on Independence Mall. This meant that the visitors center and associated buildings would be off-limit to visitors due to security concerns, and that we'd have to go elsewhere for our tourism fix.
- - - - - -
As I noted in yesterday's post, I had GI Tract issues last night and blocked up the toilet. This morning, RQS and I had to get up early, so that we'd be ready for the maintenance engineer when he arrived. We were originally told that this man would arrive between 8 and 9 am. But we later found out that he'd arrive around 9 and 10 am. This was more than acceptable to us, as RQS would be able to get an extra hour of rest. Around 9:30, the maintenance engineer arrived, and he used a snake to unclog the pipes. (The one thing you can't say about me anymore is that I am full of s**t.) It took a while, but he was done by 10 am. Then, the cleaning ladies came in to clean up the bathroom before we could get ready to go out for the day.
Noon came, and so did RQS's cousin. Now, we had to do the hokey-pokey to get into her cousin's clown car. After contorting ourselves into some unnatural positions, we had managed to fit ourselves into her car, and we were off to the Penn Museum to spend much of the day. We walked through several galleries including Ancient Egypt, the Middle East, and Africa. By 3:30, we were pooped, and it was time to go to South Philly for some fish at Anastasi Seafood.
RQS's cousin took us past the corner where Pat's and Geno's compete selling cheese steaks. And then we walked up the street a few blocks to a fish monger who would cook food to order to be eaten in a street side shed. Her cousin had mistakenly this was another place she had gone to, but we decided to eat here anyway. Can I say much about the food? Not really. This is not a restaurant after all - this is a fish monger that cooks food. The seafood platter wasn't bad, but it wasn't NYC's Oyster Bar either.
We were dropped off at the hotel around 6 pm, and we relaxed a bit before going out for some ice cream. It looked like this was a day where the police had to make their presence known, as they didn't want to be held to task if anything would occur in the upcoming debate. Once we finished our ice cream, it was back to the hotel to watch the debate. Would it change any minds? No. Hard core people with locked in positions would never be swayed by a debate. But it did show that our former president wasn't up to the task of leading this country. I hope that he doesn't get the chance to do so again.
