Having a roller coaster of a time in Philadelphia
Philip Nolan punched like Rocky, ate Amish ice cream and visited the birthplace of the US in fun-filled Pennsylvania
IT had to be done, though it might better have been attempted 30 years ago when I was in my physical prime – so while all the younger people around me were taking them at a clip, punching the air in delight and triumph when they reach the top, I took a rather more leisurely approach to climbing the Rocky Steps.
Oh, how it must rankle with the governors of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see their majestic neo-classical temple of civilisation reduced to a challenge for visiting hordes of schoolkids. The steps featured first in the original Rocky movie when, at dawn, Sylvester Stallone included them in his training regimen, punching the air at sunrise as he conquered them.
In truth, what looked on screen like a major effort turned out be just 72 steps, so it’s not exactly equivalent to summiting the Eiffel Tower the hard way, but the reward was a stupendous view.
Philadelphia is one of the oldest cities in America, founded by William Penn in 1682, and it also is the birthplace of the United States itself, the place where the Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and then the US Constitution.
William Penn also gave his name to the state, and the purpose of my trip was to visit not just the city but to travel more widely in Pennsylvania. I visited last autumn and, as a present for his 21st birthday, I took my nephew Alex along with me. At midnight on the night we arrived, he celebrated that milestone with his first legal beer in America, where the drinking age remains 21. Tired after the flight over, despite having had a good sleep on the full-flat beds in the business-class cabin on American Airlines, we celebrated quietly at the bar in the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown Hotel (sheraton.com), which offers great views.
We had spent the afternoon exploring, visiting the fantastic Reading Terminal Market, where there are dozens of food stalls offering cuisine from all over the world (and Amish delicacies, of which more later). For both of us, though, there was only one game in town: our first chance to try a Philadelphia cheesesteak, which is thin slices of fried beef and onions and melted cheese, served in a hoagie roll. Alex practically lived on them for the next eight days.
From there, we made our way down to the river to see the massive Benjamin Franklin Bridge that links the city with the neighbouring state of New Jersey; the waterfront bars were closed midweek, but in high summer they are acknowledged as the best places to escape some of the intense heat with a cold beer under an umbrella.
The morning after, fresh as the proverbial daisies, we made our way to Independence Hall. Built between 1731 and 1753 to house the Pennsylvania state legislature, it was the site of the Second Continental Congress of the 13 British colonies that, a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, voted to declare independence.
What you see today largely is a reconstruction, but it still is genuinely thrilling to occupy the space where George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and others acted as midwives to the US and declared that ‘all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’.
Slaves specifically were excluded from the equality part of this noble ideal, and the issue is not soft-soaped on the neighbouring museum, which tells the parallel story of the African-American struggle for civil rights.
We got around all the sights very easily by taking an open-top tour with the Big Bus Company, one element of the City Pass that costs $55. Valid for nine days, it allows entry to many city attractions, including the City Zoo, the Franklin Institute, and the 57th-floor observation deck on the One Liberty Tower, at 258 metres the 26th tallest building in the US. Don’t miss it – the views are wonderful.
We spent the rest of the evening in McGlinchey’s, the best of the city’s many ‘dive’ bars, where we hammered the jukebox all night and made friends with ease – they didn’t call this the city of brotherly love for nothing.
As we left in a hire car next morning we agreed we had allotted too little time to a city steeped in history, the only UNESCO World Heritage City in the US.
We headed west through bucolic countryside to Hershey, home of the chocolate bar and, for us, a little slice of roller coaster heaven in the form of Hersheypark. We had a little surprise too; just before we arrived, friends told us they had got us tickets to see Elton John live at the Giant Center auditorium.
From the beautiful Hotel Hershey (thehotelhershey.com), we visited Hershey’s Chocolate World, where we got to make personalised bars and then headed into the park, where the standout ride was a savage coaster called Skyrush, with a 200ft first drop that had me genuinely convinced I was about to die. It was brilliant.
After that, the trip developed at a much more leisurely pace – two nights sampling the delights of the Poconos, the mountain getaway for much of the northeast coast. We stayed at the Shawnee Inn and Golf Resort (shawneeinn.com), a gracious building opened in 1912. Now a modern resort with its own micro-
‘There was only one game in town for both of us: to try our first Philly cheesesteak’
brewery and standalone pub, the Gem and Keystone, a good indoor pool, and frontage onto the Delaware River (stunning at dawn), it proved the ideal base from which to tour local attractions such as the magnificent Bushkill Falls.
From there, we drove to Amish Country, centred on Lancaster, an atmospheric town where period terraced houses with wrought iron raining and balconies gave it the feel of a mini New Orleans. We took a bus tour that brought us deep into the heart of Amish Country, where you still see people driving horse-drawn buggies (they even have tethering posts for the horses in the car park of the Target superstore) and got to eat the most amazing ice cream ever at an Amish farm stand. It was a fascinating insight into a culture that doggedly persists even in the modern world.
My cousins live nearby so the night ended with a raucous meal in Annie Bailey’s Irish Pub, which served a shepherd’s pie so big it defeated us all.
After a night at the great Lancaster Arts Hotel (lancasterartshotel.com), where the corridors, rooms and public areas are an endless gallery of excellent traditional and modern artworks, we were back in the car, where we had to make a quick stop for photos at the sign for the town of Intercourse. Once a schoolboy and all that!
Then we drove to Valley Forge, site in 1777/78 of the winter camp for George Washington’s forces during the American Revolutionary War, and stayed in the adjacent King of Prussia, where we spend the last day shopping in the biggest mall in the US; at one point, I was horrified to search Google maps and find a shop I wanted to visit was in the same building but half a mile away. We stayed at the Radisson (radisson.com), where there also is a casino that swallowed our last few dollars.
Pennsylvania proved endlessly captivating, leaving so much more to be done. Like all the best holidays, we had an absolute ball, but ended up longing to go back quickly.
As for Alex, the last time I saw him before our flight, he was eating another cheesesteak... you never know when you’ll get the next good one.