Public transportation

Nope, not done yet with our trip to Philadelphia.
As you could read in my last blog entry, it was only about 15 minutes later that we arrived at the Philadelphia train station.
Again a huge building with high ceilings.
Here I didn't have the urge to whisper, it was more busy than Harrisburg and you could hear a lot of noise from everywhere. The big hall was one level up and in the middle a huge information desk was available for people to get info about traveling but also about the city itself.
A beautiful Christmas tree almost got lost in the space.
The other thing that stood out was the amount of security people walking around.
I am still not sure if it gave me a safe feeling or the other way around.

Anyway, the whole time I was too busy to look around because I was keeping a close eye on Jack, since finally we were in the 'big' city and I had no clue where we would be going next.
I am not a city person, I love living in the small villages and the few years I lived in Groningen don't count since that is such a small city, it took me 10 minutes on the bike to get outside the city borders.
And from what I had seen when I flew in to Philadelpia, the city is huge.

It turned out that Jack wanted to take the subway into the inner city. Great, another experience with a new transportation system.
Fully expecting that Jack had done this before, I followed him towards the underground where we found the place where they were supposed to leave.

There we met a little problem, Jack didn't know how it worked either.
After some hassle with a lady behind a desk who wasn't too helpful it turned out that we had to get some tokens to get through the entrance gates.
All in all, I think this was the first time we met someone that wasn't helpful.
But Jack figured it out and we went through the gate.

There we met our next challenge.
When you aren't used to it, it is close to impossible to figure out what subway to take. the signs look more like math to me and as clear as Chinese.
The subway station, which is underground is the total opposite from the train station.
No luxury, dirty and noisy. And the smell, yuck.

And as it turned out, Jack didn't exactly know where we had to go either.
So again we had to ask, the answer wasn't exactly as we hoped, but we got on one and got out at a place Jack thought was the right one.
Boy, was I glad to get out of there.
And when we got out we found ourselves only a block away from the museums and information centers.
Right in the middle of Philadelphia on a beautiful sunny day in the middle of winter.