Philadelphia | Fitness is Sweet

Well, if you’re keeping track, I’m now in Alabama! Places I’ve been in 2017: Kansas, Tennessee, Philadelphia, Alabama. I. Am. Beat. I’m also incredibly grateful for a break from the cold before I head back up north Thursday night. I have a randomly long time in Alabama because it made no sense to fly clear across the country home from Philadelphia and be there for all of 1 day and then fly back across the country. However, somehow I managed to convince my zoo friends to drive down from St. Louis to hang out in Auburn for a few days. One of them went to Auburn for undergrad, so she comes down occasionally to see her friends here.

Sunday morning I woke up in Philadelphia and hopped on the treadmill for a quick and early 3 miles. For breakfast, I made a flapjacked muffin that I brought, plus a carrot apple ginger lemon juice which I bought at Pure Fare the day before. I felt like I was coming down with a cold, so #health.

Getting a cab to the airport went seamlessly, so I ended up with plenty of time to kill at the airport. The flight to Atlanta was seamless, and it was lunchtime when I landed. I figured my best bet for lunch was at the airport, and I found a “Food Network Atlanta Kitchen” where I bought chicken and rice soup and some cracker type things.

The Atlanta airport was buzzing on Superbowl Sunday! And yes, I did carefully book my flight to arrive at my destination in time for the Super Bowl. I drove the 1.5 hours to Auburn, and upon checking into my hotel, finally met up with my friends. Can you believe it’s already been 3 months??

At this point in my journey, I was so emotionally and physically tired, and seeing them was just the best thing ever. I seriously almost started crying. And look what they brought me!

You cannot get this outside of St. Louis and it is amazing. I am SO excited!

We laid low for a bit before going to an early dinner at a Greek restaurant. I got lemon chicken soup and Greek salad.

Then, we picked up some drinks (I got Blue Moon) to take to a Superbowl party with my friend’s friend from Auburn. I wasn’t sure if this would still fall into Falcon’s territory, but it seemed like people around here were pretty evenly split between the Falcons and Patriots. I went in undecided; I thought the Falcons played so well in the playoffs, but I normally root for the Patriots (over any other team in general) because Tom Brady is from my hometown. As it turns out, my loyalty runs deeps and I found myself cheering for the Patriots from the start. Admittedly, when the Patriots got so far down I got distracted with other Super Bowl party activities, but I definitely watched the epic comeback. WOW. I actually didn’t catch overtime. The group wanted to head downtown, and we tried to make it by the time overtime started, but we were a few minutes short. Darn!

However, I did get to experience what is supposedly the biggest bar in the SEC.

It was a fun night!

Monday morning I woke up STARVING so I helped myself to hotel breakfast while my friends slept.

^grits <3

But was still hungry for second breakfast.

Honestly there’s not a ton to do here. We hung around before it was time for lunch. We went to a create your own personal pizza place, and it was so good! I got jerk chicken on GF crust.

After lunch we went to see a movie, Split. I thought it was decent but just got weird at the end. Funny it was set in Philly though! Looked familiar!

Check out this “art” in from of an art museum here:

For dinner, we went to a Mexican restaurant. I ordered chicken soup (it had avocado!) with rice, and it came with basically an entire chicken in there! Seriously, SO much meat. I didn’t get close to finishing it!

We spent the rest of the night hanging out and playing cards.

The next morning, sadly, everyone had to leave and head back to their lives back home! We had a quick breakfast beforehand.

So sad to see them go, but I’m so happy they came!

However, that left me 2 full days in Alabama by myself, haha. I spent the rest of the morning doing nothing/doing laundry before popping into Panera for lunch.

I found a natural foods store nearby that was basically exactly like Whole Foods, so I stopped in to restock some snacks. I also found the ginger chews I’ve been obsessed with lately, and they even had an apple flavor!! SO delicious.

In the afternoon, I wandered around a mall, read a book, and took a nap. I was going to try to drive around the area a bit more, but there was an emergency severe weather alert on the radio for thunderstorms and I didn’t want to be driving around in that, so I huddled in my hotel with a book and watched the storm unfurled outside.

In the evening, I dropped into a Crossfit. As it turns out, there is a Crossfit literally right next to my hotel. I was so shocked when I realized it was so close! Like, it basically shares the same parking lot. I braved the storm to walk the 200 feet to the box and felt so welcome! All Crossfits are so welcoming, but this one especially. We had a nice, long workout. It was 30 minutes of 1 minute per station: walking lunges, farmer’s carry, rowing, bear crawl, shuttle sprints. Plus some handstand practice. My handstands, while pretty terrible, are finally starting to feel stronger since my shoulder injury forever ago. It was nice to get moving again after a day off!

Because I’m boring, I went back to the Greek place for dinner and ordered a Greek salad with chicken.

The rest of this night consisted of typing up this post, and a date with a massive chocolate chip cookie I picked up in the Philly airport. I’m honestly still so exhausted, so I’m embracing the downtime!

I’mm check back in probably on Thursday with some more “food and fitness as a nomad” adventures!

Hello from the East Coast! I’m checking in with you all as I end the my first leg of this three-pronged trip. I’m currently blogging from my hotel in Philadelphia! I’ve only been to this city once before, and it was for a college visit, and I was here extremely briefly (like a few hours).

Let’s take it back.

Thursday morning, I hit up the gym EARLY to sneak a workout in before my flight. I started the workout at 5:15am! I did 4 sets of 4 slow descent deadlifts at 155, and then did 4 sets of 6 single legged squats and RDLs. I finished with some weighted planks.

For breakfast, I made a protein smoothie with banana, milk, cocoa, and Quest protein. Of course with Cheerios.

^If you’re keeping track, I got back from Boston two days before leaving!

At the airport:

While waiting for my connecting flight to Phoenix, I noticed the flight leaving from the gate next to mine was going directly to Philadelphia!

I packed lunch to eat on my flight from Phoenix to Philly. To keep my food cold, I packed a bag of frozen peas.

I packed leftover butternut squash and sage egg bake with asparagus and GF crackers. The egg bake was leftover from the previous night’s breakfast for dinner:

This was PaleOMG’s recipe. We skipped the sausage, and added quatro formaggio cheese and spinach.

Plane snack:

When I landed, I knew it would be late and I didn’t want to go out after getting to my hotel, so I picked up Subway at the airport to go and ate dinner in my hotel.

I also pulled some carrot oatmeal cookies from the freezer before I left, and they thawed beautifully for dessert.

Not a bad view from my hotel!

Jet lag stinks, and I woke up early with very few hours of sleep under my belt. I packed a little bit of fruit since I knew it might be hard to find, so I had a tangerine with my breakfast bar.

Then it was time to brace the cold and take to the streets. Brrr.

I spent a lot of the day absolutely freezing. Unfortunately my clothing necessary for my activities was far from warm enough (flats….yeesh) and my toes were completely numb for a majority of the day. Seriously, I was concerned some of them would be lost. My feet were number for 4 hours and it was the absolute worst. I finally warmed up by the time I had to walk the 15 minutes back to the hotel, and it was brutal. I wore my flats through the city and was on the verge of tears by the time I finally reached my hotel, my because my feet were half numb/half in pain from the cold. I had grander dinner plans, but after changing into warmer clothes, I still did not want to go out. My hotel was attached to an Asian restaurant, and a big bowl of rice noodles sounded just about perfect.

After a few hours in a warm hotel room, it took some major rallying for me to brace the cold night air to walk the 10 minutes to Shake Shack. I put on every jacket I brought on the trip (3) with my scarf, gloves, ski socks, and boots. Shake Shack has the best frozen custard though. I got vanilla with fudge.

Saturday morning I dropped into a Crossfit class in University City. The temperatures were even colder than the previous day!

Feels like 15?? Yeesh. Again, I donned every jacket I had. Thankfully the sun made the temperature not feel terrible. At least the scenery was nice!

Of course, everyone was incredibly welcoming. The WOD was a 7 minute AMRAP of 5 front squats and 7 over the bar burpees. I finished 6+1.

After Crossfit, I went back to the hotel and got cleaned out before heading to Rittenhouse Square for lunch. I actually didn’t quite make it to my intended location before finding another cute looking cafe, Good Karma Cafe. Plus, it was nice and warm! I got sweet potato tortilla chips, a chicken sandwich with green goddess mayo and veggies on GF bread, and a GF chocolate chip cookie.

After lunch, I decided to check out the square!

Another note: I’m so impressed with the food in this city!

From there, I headed over to see the Liberty Bell. When in Philadelphia, right?

After that, I returned to Rittenhouse Square to meet an old blogger friend, Brittany, who used to blog at Freckled Nettles! We used to talk wayyy back in the early days of our respective blogs, and it was great to meet her in person! She was so sweet, and was able to tell me all about this city! Just another reason I love this community!

I was managing the cold pretty well throughout the day, but I wanted to be back in my hotel before the sun went down and the temperature dropped further. I picked up a sandwich (+carrot juice for tomorrow morning) at Pure Fare, and then went to a bagel place (random) across the street from my hotel to have some local beer. I’ve been trying local beer pretty much everywhere I’ve visited lately, so it was only fair!

The great thing about being in a college area is that it’s totally normal to sit alone!

I also had to stop at Wawa. I’m not sure how much of a thing Wawa is outside of Pennsylvania, but people here are very into it. I came to Pennsylvania for a college recruitment softball tournament back in high school, and we had some local players join my team for the week. They told us all about Wawa and TastyKakes, so of course for old time’s sake I had to go in.

Back in my room, I enjoyed a goat brie and fig sandwich (this was as amazing as it sounds) on GF bread with leftover chips from lunch.

And then ate a rice crispy treat I picked up from Wawa for dessert.

I feel like I should have found a more exciting dessert option given the abundance of amazing things here. The sad thing was Pure Fare had some amazing looking desserts, but they all had coconut oil. Darn coconut allergy!

Either way, it was a nice and cozy night, after a fun day exploring the city. Up next: Alabama!

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