Philly Cheesesteak!

We turned up to our hostel at roughly 8pm, and boy were we in for a surprise...

Nic's reactions explain it all!

It was actually a great hostel with friendly knowledgeable staff and really good facilitlies. (The photos above are actually from The Eastern State Penitentiary which we visited the following day) We made some food and chilled for the evening.

Up nice and early there was now only one thing on my mind... time for some food, a Philly cheesesteak was in order! The staff recommended a local place called 'Jim's', claiming they serve the best traditional cheeesesteaks in town, a combination of thinly chopped beef steak, fried onions and melted cheese... and they were not wrong!

Both having an interest in crime we took a visit to the Eastern State Penitentiary passing the famous Rocky steps along the way!

There were a lot of people running up the steps emulating the scene out of Rocky, I thought I would do the same (the photos just look like i'm posing but of course I was running... cough cough!)

Next up was the Eastern State Penitentiary which was the 1st penitentiary in the world built in roughly 1850. I broke in...

I think Nic must have clearly edited this photo because as you can see above the wall was definitely bigger than this!!!

The idea was to change the way of the prison system that existed at the time as it was failing - too crowded, riots, disease etc and the fact that once they prisoners were actually released they often offended again and went straight back to prison.

The Eastern State Penitentiary however, was attempting an innovative idea, that was the idea of penitence and true remorse.

The new system believed that everyone had the capacity to change and they believed this was achieved through non violent methods and solitary confinement 23 1/2 hours a day. The whole principle was built on silence... if the prisoners could not communicate with each other then they would have time to reflect and hopefully find remorse.

The prison itself at the time was very modern, it had electricity and even a full flushing toilet system when people in the White House were using Chamber pots! The reason for the modern technologies was to enable the prisoners to remain in solitary confinement, however the work being undertaken by the prisoners was far behind its time because of this solitary confinement. A combination of problems resulted in the idea being scrapped. Many of the prisoners went mad, spending years without having any human contact. Many people believed the system to be in humane (children as young as 12 were spending years here) and it didn't actually survive that long.

Al Capnones cell......

We walked back through town taking in all the sights of the city.

That night the hostel had a movie and free beer night so we chilled out had some drinks and played a little pool.

Next we were up early to go and visit the Liberty Bell, a bell which has a different meaning to different people. The bell became a symbol for the independance of America, a symbol for the abolition of slavery and a symbol for women's rights and equality.

Philadelphia was again an awesome place to visit, we learnt a lot about the history of the city and really enjoyed our time there. There was no time to get attached however, on to Toronto!

written by

SupandNic on January 2, 2010 from Philadelphia, United States

from the travel blog: Sup and Nic's World Tour!

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