Our trip officially started with me picking Eric up from work and driving to the park and ride at the airport. Lucky me, I was selected for an additional security search (supposedly thanks to my shoes). At least the woman used the back of her hand like she said she would. Since we had "C" boarding passes, we simply camped out in line when we got to the gate and managed to get a middle and aisle seat next to each other.

After arriving in Philadelphia, we considered taking the shuttle to a downtown location then walking several blocks to our B&B. The host lady quoted that price at $5 each but once we discovered it was only $4 more (total) for a cab ride right to the front door of our hotel, we hailed a taxi.

There are a lot of oil refineries just beyond the airport, but the view improved once we saw the waterfront with the little bit of light that remained in the day. After arriving at the Columns on Clinton B&B, we called the number we had for the guy who was watching the place since no one answered the door when we knocked. Our lady host was actually gone (it turned out to be for the entire weekend) so a young couple was looking after the place while we were there. We found out later that these people lived at the house and couldn't really stand the lady who owned the place. Great. The man let us in and we decided on the third floor room with the non-attached bathroom (instead of the fourth floor private-bath room we reserved) since there was no one else staying on the third floor to share it with us. Oh, and it was less stairs to walk up. This would become more important as our leg energy steadily decreased throughout our trip.

We unloaded our stuff and walked a few blocks to Sal's on 12th for dinner. I hadn't eaten lunch, so I was pretty starved by the time we sat down. I ordered the lobster ravioli with crab meat and shrimp sauce and Eric got more chicken parmesan than one person has any right to have sitting in front of them. The food was very tasty and the bread with olive tapenade before the meal was also good. I ordered a glass of Chianti and Eric stuck with soda. Unfortunately we had absolutely no room for dessert, so we took off just as the restaurant was starting to fill up. The place is very unassuming from the outside, but once you get past the smoky bar area the room opens up to a nice dining area with columns supporting glass tabletops and an open kitchen area.

We made it back to the room to relax a bit before ER came on and then planned the next day's activities before retiring for the evening.

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