Whoa, Philly!

I am quite fond of Philadelphia, city of Brotherly Love. I recently went there with the usual suspects and we had a very simple agenda:





1. Lunch at Reading Terminal Market and getting some fudge from my favorite chocolate shop--I bought 2lbs of the yummy goodness.
2. Seeing the Liberty Bell and not getting angry about not being able to touch it anymore (Christina has some wells of bitterness towards Philly and the Liberty Bell because she remembers when you were allowed to put your grubby fingers on it.
3. Dairy Queen--because as great as New York is, there aren't any Dairy Queens. Sometimes you just want a Butterfinger Blizzard.
4. Shopping. Because, well, we like to shop.













We also went to Eastern State Penitentiary:


















Located just a few blocks away from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the prison was opened in 1928 and considered to be the world's first true penitentiary. I have to admit, the place was cold and dank, and the lighting left much to be desired. I guess this created "atmosphere"? The most interesting thing I learned from the place was that it the birthplace of a new system of incarceration, referred to as the Pennsylvania System, and utilized solitary confinement as a form of rehabilitation. This is in contrast to the New York System which had prisoners work together in silence. Sing Sing prison upstate is an example of this system. I am glad that I learned this from the museum and not firsthand experience.



Tidbits: The movie Twelve Monkeys used ESP as the setting for the mental hospital

















Al Capone spent some time here (in quite a luxe room, actually). They said he would spend brief periods in prison to avoid mob trouble.
















There was also a feral cat population that took over the penitentiary after it closed in the '70s. Over time they fixed all of the cats, so eventually the population died out. There are these slightly creepy white ceramic sculptures of cats placed all around the place to represent them.