Surprise Party!

The 'excuse' for visiting my family in Philly was my C-I-L's surprise 40th birthday party.  Somehow he was absolutely clueless!!!

Cheesesteak et al.

Last weekend we headed to the Jersey side of Philly to see my Jersey family who aren't named Jersey :)  We took advantage of the beautiful springy-summer weather and went into Philly for the day on Saturday.

Would you believe that until last Saturday I had never actually had a cheese steak in Philly?  We headed down to the south side and chose to give Geno our business.  Next time we venture that way, I want to try Pat's so I can make an accurate comparison. 

From Cheese Steak Corner we headed out to pick up a few geocaches in the neighborhood, which brought us to the Italian Market.  I had no idea that this awesome neighborhood existed!   There was lots of amazing looking food and the atmosphere was really cool.  It reminded me of some of my favorite parts of the Strip District here in PGH.

 From there we headed over towards the river to make a stop at Yard's Brewing.  We had seen Yards on the Philly episode of "Drinking Made Easy" so we wanted to stop by.  They make a handful of beers, including several that are based on recipes brewed by the founding fathers -- including Thomas Jefferson's Spruce Ale.  We got a taster of that one -- gross.  No need for a full pint.  We did enjoy a pint of the Love Stout and took the tour of the brewery.

The City of Cousinly Love

And onward with the travels of Sarah! Last week work sent me to Philadelphia, PA to take a two day continuing education course on finite element modeling. Sounds exiting, doesn't it? It was about as exciting as it sounds! Actually, the professor teaching it was pretty good considering the topic du jour. One of the best parts of traveling is getting to go eat delicious foods. This trip proved no different. On our first night in Philly we ate at Pietros, a yummy Italian place on Walnut street near Rittenhouse Square. The stuffed mushrooms were fabulous! The second night of the trip was absolutely the best! My cousin Jennie gave me some reccomendations for places to eat. We went to Dmitri's, a small hometown joint serving mediterarean style seafood. It had RAVE reviews on citysearch. Everything looked so good. We had hummus - yummus! For dinner I had one of the specials, a pan fried flounder. It was so good. i could tell that fish had never been frozen. mmmmm

After class Friday afternoon I took the train up to visit my cousin Rob, his girlfriend Courtney and their posse of critters. They are animal lovers and have become really involved in animal rescue. Right now they have two Pit Bulls, Brody and Piper; a cat with half a tail, Moon Pie; a bunny rabbit, Ernie; and a Chinchilla, January. I hadn't seen Rob and Court in a couple of years, so we had a great visit catching up. They have a really cute house, and I can tell they are doing some great thigns with it. The before and after's on their kitchen are so crazy I can't even verbalize them! We went out for dinner on Friday night before Rob had to head to Baltimore and Courtey had to hit the hay so she could get up for work on Saturday morning. Before we called it a night though, I got to see January take a bath. For those who aren't aware, they have everychild's dream bath - they roll around in dirt. I had always heard this, and now I've seen it! I also got to see Ernie try to hump January -- apparently he goes for anything female!

Saturday morning I slept in and enjoyed a fun morning wtih the critters. After I finally rolled out of bed we watched Shrek the Third. I really enjoyed it, but I'm a dorky child at heart! That afternoon my cousin Jennie came by and picked me up. We got in touch with our inner Martha Goersses (our grandmother) and hit the outlet mall. It was crazy! I enjoyed it, but it was insane there. I got some new sandals from Nine West and we both hit the Ann Taylor store. I then got to go to Jennie and Andrew's new house. They closed about a month and a half before I did. There house is really nice, and the garden is really intense. The previous owner was a master gardener so they have a really nice setup and get lots of birds out their back yard. We went to dinner with some friends of theirs and called it a night. Sunday morning we slept in and Andrew went and got us donuts from L&M - a yummy bakery. He is a total keeper. Jennie and i spent a little quality time with Ina Gardner, aka the Barefoot Contessa. At that point it was time for me to head out.

Luckily, I avoided the mass delay on Delta. Instead, I made it home safely and mostly on time. It was great to see the family, but it was nice to come home to my spoiled babies. Big kudos go to Alissa and JR for watching the dogs while I was out. I'm sure I'll be paying them back sometime.