Our trip to the birthplace of cream cheese

We spent much of last week cheering on the St. Louis Cardinals during their fierce battle for the playoffs. After the Cardinals clinched the wild card, we decided to drive up to Philadelphia for game 1 of the National League Division Series.

We have wanted to visit Philly for awhile and this gave us even more incentive. Ben was excited to sing the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" theme song.  "West Philadelphia born and raised, on the playground is where I spent most of my days..."  Kelly felt like the limit for the signing of that song should probably be 10 times.  This forced Ben to mix in some "Eye of the Tiger" to pass the time on the drive up.

Our first stop was the Philadelphia Art Museum.  The museum building is stunning and probably has some great art, but the $16 admission seemed a little steep, especially with our limited time. Also, we have probably been spoiled by all of the free museums in DC.  The real reason that the Philadelphia Art Museum was our first stop, was its iconic place in the movie Rocky.

Also, the museum grounds are home to the Rocky statue from the movie.

With our Rocky pilgrimage complete, we headed downtown to check out Independence Hall. Unfortunately there was substantial scaffolding up for a rehabilitation project, but still we were impressed to see the building featured on the back of the $100 bill.

Long lines a limited time deterred us from going inside Independence Hall or the Liberty Bell exhibit.

Fortunately, much of downtown Philadelphia is preserved from the revolutionary era and it seemed everywhere you turned it was the birthplace of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence or the building were the Continental Congress convened etc etc. We took some time to visit the "The Carpenter's Hall" where the Continental Congress met and where Ben Franklin spent a lot of time holding secret meetings.

We were also on a quest to take in the best of Philadelphia's culinary offerings. We were determined to find the best cheesesteak and soft pretzel in the city. After much research, we were torn whether to try "Jim's Steaks" or "Tony Lukes" for a cheesesteak. We settled on Jim's Steaks  and were somewhat surprised to find a line out the door and around the block at 2:15pm, but we figured there must be a line for a reason.

Jim's is located on South Street which has miles of shops, restaurants and weird random stores, perfect for Ben's need to wander. Kelly decided to get in line and let Ben do his thing. 45 minutes later, we were able to order our cheesesteak.

(If Mr. T endorses something, it must be good...right?)

It was quite a process. We took a seat and finally took a bite of this highly anticipated cheese steak.

Immediately following our first bite our hearts sank with disappointment. The meat was a little dry, the roll was only so-so and the toppings left something to be desired. We commented that it needed a sauce, and cheese steaks shouldn't require sauce. We left shaking our heads and wondering what everyone was so jazzed about. We had never had a cheesesteak and if Jim's is "the best", we would rather just pass.

We regrouped and headed to the game. In typical Ben and Kelly fashion, we didn't have tickets but decided to roll the dice anyway. Ben started to work his magic, but was caught off guard when the scalpers said it would be $125/ticket just to get in the stadium and probably more like $200/ticket. We took a break from ticket hunting and we into McFadden's for a beverage.

We both were dressed head to toe in Cardinals gear, which in hindsight was probably not a great idea. We had been warned throughout the day that our gear might be dangerous, but laughed it off.  Ben informed several people that 'danger' was his middle name.  Most of the banter was "Cardinals suck" or "get outta here" or "really? oh really?" but our favorite comment was when we were  walking through the parking lot and Ben spotted the grill that we want to get and pointed it out to me. The Phillies fan quickly shouted to Ben "stop eyeing my grill or i'll kick your ass." That let us know we were going to be enjoying the game with a colorful bunch of Phillies fans.

We continued to struggle to find tickets and game time was getting closer and closer. After Ben let out a half-hearted "anyone got extra tickets," two girls responded with an excited YES! When we asked how much they wanted for the tickets they responded with "buy us two beers and call it a deal." Before they could rethink the deal, we gave them beer money and headed toward the gate. We got to our seats just in time for the first pitch.

Our trip to our seats was filled with chants of "you suck" and boo's. Fortunately, our seats were next to two friendly Phillies fans that were very cordial and fun. The Cards got out to a fast lead with a 3-run homer by Lance Berkman. We were obviously very excited and let out a celebratory cheer. It seemed as though one other guy and us were the only three Cards fans in the entire stadium.

Unfortunately, it was early and even though the Cards led for several innings, the Phillies are a solid team.  One very solid part of that team is St. Louis native Ryan Howard.

Howard's 3-run home run tied the game before the Phillies eventually took the lead for good.  The stadium erupted as you can see in the video below.

While the game went in a direction that we were not fond of, we did manage a lemonade out of lemons moment.  The stadium Tony Luke's location gave us a second bite at the ... cheesesteak.

This was a second bite worth having and tempted us to get a third bite, but will power won out.  The Tony Luke's cheesesteak was hands down a superior sandwich.

With our sandwich mission complete and the game over, we said goodbye to the stadium and got on the road back to DC.

It was brisk Sunday morning in DC.  The fall weather set the mood for our first flag football game of the season.  We joined a team from Arkansas and played near the Washington Monument.  Kelly had an MVP performance with an interception and a blocked pass on defense to go along with a passing touchdown.  Ben played a solid game at center and had a couple good catches.  In the end it was more than enough to dominate the Hawaiian team we played.