Philadelphia

After returning to Knoxville I finally found some time to work on the pictures taken in Philadelphia on a 10h stopover on my way to Germany for Christmas. I was blessed with great weather: sunshine and temperatures around 10 centigrade :)

My first goal was to see the museum of art. Not for the art, but...

... for the view. The view is quite famous due to the Rocky movies. And indeed, I have seen at least two tourists jumping around up there trying to mimic the original. It also seems to be a nice place for wedding photography (as seen in the lower right).

The statue was put atop the steps for the movies Rocky III and IV and later moved to the foot of the steps.

Going back into the city I found what looked like a crashed airplane on first sight. It is located right next to the art school and was a project by one the students, who put a plant in the cockpit.

I passed through (crowded) China town (with the typical gate that I have already seen in Washington)...

... and ended up at the Delaware river where I watched an old man feeding seagulls.

The Benjamin Franklin Bridge is 533m long and used to be the worlds longest suspension bridge.

In a small bay, you can find the Cruiser Olympia (launched in 1892)...

... and across the river lies the Battleship New Jersey.

The last goal of the day was to find some food. One recommendation was to try Philly Cheese Steak but this restaurant was just too crowded, people seem to be waiting in line for more than 15 minutes...

... so I went on and found this one. The Cheese Steak was a mess, simply white bread, cheese and meat (I didn't add the fried onions due to the 9h flight ahead of me). Well, typical American fast food, I guess ^^

More interesting than the food were these two stickers on the windows of the restaurant. While I don't want to comment on the first one, the second one caught my attention as I have seen people calling to free Mumia on almost all demonstrations I attended back in Germany over the years. Now, this seems to be the other side of the story (I don't want to go into details here).

Due to a lack of time and because I didn't want to go through the security hassle, I haven't seen the Liberty Bell. However, I came across a demonstration for legalizing marihuana which was a delightful ending for my tour through the city.