day 76

we awoke to a busy day of sightseeing. big thank you to miss tricia snyder who put together a great list of attractions and food to partake in while we are here in philly. so we just went down her list and set off. we had to get some dunkin donuts to start our day since they are EVERYWHERE on the east coast. we then headed to see independence hall, the liberty bell, betsy ross' house, ben franklin's grave, penn's landing, tomb of the unknown soldier, and that's just the old part of the city. its nice to see the super touristy things but we also had a good time just roaming the streets ducking into used bookstores and little shops that seemed interesting. we then went to south street where we walked the strip of shops and waited in line at jim's steak to get philly cheesesteaks and some birch beer, a delicious pennsylvanian dutch root beer. we then headed back to pauline's apartment to relax before we biked up to northern liberties to attend a church service at the circle of hope. it was only a 2-3 mile bike ride up to circle of hope and we were excited to attend. circle of hope is a set of church groups that cater to younger adults and two bands that we love, mewithoutyou and the psalters, attend this church so we thought we'd check it out. it was a very comfortable atmosphere and the music was very great, a nice blend of english, spanish, and latin songs. the message was also very good where we went over the story of jacob wrestling with God and then we looked at several art pieces depicting this story from the renaissance. it was basically a large group discussion and it was a nice change from most of the traditional churches i have attended. the service was over and we stayed around and chatted with a few people then went down to the corner to get some dinner. we got a great special of 2 medium pizzas, 20 hot wings, and a 2 liter of soda for 20 bucks. we were eating like kings in the park. we then biked over to the waterfront to enjoy the nice night. i caught up with friends on the phone, which was wonderful and after a couple of hours we decided to head back to the apartment. just a solid day in philly and excited for what the next couple of days will hold. oh yes, almost forgot, while we were at circle of hope we saw that the psalters were going to be playing a show the day we leave, so guess we are staying another day to go catch that show! this is great.