A bus trip! To Eastern State Penitentiary. We all piled on the bus at eleven and headed to the city for a tour.
The prison is a huge structure that resides just outside of the downtown area, completely unassuming and hidden unless you stumble upon it.
We did an audio tour of the place with Steve Buscemi narrating us through the hallways. I liked looking into the rundown old cell blocks that aren't open to walk through. There were several artists' installations throughout the complex which I felt really took away from the historic feeling of the place.
The sliding cell doors were reminiscent of the ones I saw at Alcatraz except they were all independent of one another instead of on a system. These were build much earlier though. The audio tour was really interesting and informative. I wandered on my own, I don't think a lot of other people were listening to the whole thing.
I explored the outside area of the prison next, walking along the twenty-foot high, four-foot thick outside walls. At the baseball field, it said that when fly balls flew over the fence, they often got balls thrown back over that had drugs hidden in them. I guess there's always been a way to sneak things in.
Once the tour was basically over we had some time left so I went with Alex and Joanna to find some food. We found a place called The Bishop's Collar a few blocks away where Joanna got the best veggie quesadilla we've ever tried. It was great. Go there and get one.
Unfortunately I got this little veggie burger. This wasn't it. It was alright but it wasn't The Burger nor was it near as good as the quesadilla being consumed just a few feet in front of me. Joanna shared though.
We did Quizzo at PJ's since we missed it last night. It was a good game at first and we were doing pretty well. Chuck and I got crab cake sandwiches that were served on the smallest roll possible.
We did poorly in the sports round of course and Jeff became increasingly annoyed at the team right next to us who were making it blatantly obvious that they were using their cell phones to look up all the answers. They didn't win anyway which made us happy but the people who did win had such a ridiculously high score that they must have been cheating as well. Oh well.. I miss the Ben.
I came home and fell asleep watching Modern Family.
It wasn't exactly what we planned for, but Jeff and I went out to the course in the early afternoon and played ten holes before the weather started getting a little unfriendly. We did pretty well though. It started raining just as we were walking back to the car.
I went home to grab lunch and then we drove out to my mom's to have band practice with Chuck and Zack. We went through most of the songs and they all sound quite good. We still need a little work, but if we can practice weekly I think we'll be set pretty soon.
The rain got really hard later in the day and the drive up to Glassboro was slow but really enjoyable. It was raining in heavy sheets that tore across the highway as large drops illuminated in my headlights like giant fireflies.
I picked up Alex and Cait and found a great parking spot when we got to Philly. The rain had stopped and the weather was amazing. We walked down the center of the street to The Bishop's Collar.
We met Nathan there and got a few beers while we looked at the menu. Alex tried the cider she's been looking forward to all week. It was pretty good. It went fast.
There were a good deal of tasty beers on tap. I got the WTF and some brown ale I can't remember the name of right now. For the most part, I was really happy with their beer selection.
I got The Quesadilla and it was amazing of course. Cait got a plate of nachos that took up a third of the table with a giant pile of guacamole on it. We had a good time talking and drinking for a few hours. I would really like to go back there another night. It's not quite the Abbaye, but it'll do.
We sat around talking for a while when we got back before it was time to retire for the night. I had brought beer for later, but I was too tired when we got back to even have one.
