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!