Goodbye New York, hello Philadelphia!

The day we leave New York. Its day 6 of our trip and its the day we took in 3 Man vs Food places in 1 day!

We woke up around 11 from having been out clubbing the night before, we had to check out by 12 so we begrudgingly started packing our stuff up. We were unsure as to exactly we had parked our car, so we wandered up about 3 or 4 streets until we found it, we weren't worried I swear!

The weather was amazing, hot, sunny and a cool gentle breeze. We headed over to Brooklyn to have lunch with my friends Steven and Johnny, we went and had a dipped sandwhich at Brennan and Carr's, this was a Man vs Food location, on that show he normally takes in meals that are massive, but I wasn't prepared for simply how good this sandwich was. It is a dipped beef sandwich, where they cook the thinly sliced beef in a secret blend of beef broth, then dip the entire sandwich back into the broth! It was incredible, and this was our lunch.

However we also knew there was another Brooklyn Man vs Food location near by and Steve said we definately had to try it out. It was Spumoni's pizza place, it's where they take a pizza and put the cheese under the sauce, so the cheese bubbles up through the sauce. This once again was just incredible, I have never had pizza like it, the base was soft and delicious and not overly cheesy and the sauce was just undescribable, both these meals were our lunch, and both of these meals were up in the top thing's I've ever eaten.

We departed from Steve and Johnny, they escorted us to the highway and we made our way to Philadelphia. This trip would have been rather uneventful if not for the fact that when we go into Phili we were pulled over by the police.
The police had followed us off the slip way and onto the 611 into Philadelphia. They followed us for about a mile before turning on their sirens and asking us to pull over. They came up along side once we had stopped and asked us for our licenses. Once they realised that we were English they lightened their tone and began asking us questions like about whether or not we had any narcotics, guns or knives on us. Then they asked me to get out of the car and (Paolo was in the drivers seat) and he wanted to see where on the rental contract it said that Paolo was allowed to drive, so I had to find it for him. He asked me if I had a body in the boot (he wasn’t kidding) and I told him no and then I asked if I minded if he looked through the car for any guns, which I didn’t mind.

It was a brilliant experience and actually ended up being a good thing because once they had finished doing their usual cop stuff, we just stood around and chatted about Philadelphia and England, one of them had a brother who worked in England and they both gave us advice on where not to go in Philadelphia. They pointed us on our way and gave us directions to our hotel. We then asked to take a photo before we left, they wouldn’t let us take a photo of them but they let us take on of their car, so here is the picture of us pulled over on the side of the road with 2 police cars on our tail!

We followed the cop’s directions to our hotel, which was the Crowne Plaza; we were staying in quite a level of comfort. Compared with the New York room this was amazing, we went to the gym and then had a good shower and clean, watched some TV then headed out to Philly for a night out. We firstly made our way to a Man vs. Food place for dinner, Jims Philly Cheese-steak. I wasn’t really hungry, but the queue was out of the building and round the corner so we joined in case I felt hungry later. I did. The smell was incredible! Unlike other fatty grease fast food joint in America this one was clean and there wasn’t that greasy feel you get from the air. The steak was fresh high quality beef that they cooked on a hot plate grill; it sat there stewing in broth that they kept pouring over it to keep it moist. I ordered a Philly cheese-steak with American cheese and cooked onions; Paolo got a Philly cheese-steak with Whiz cheese (this was the recommended combo). We shared a half each and ordered Dr.Peppers each, very American of us. It was incredible, such juicy steak and it truly hit the spot, satisfaction has never had a more fulfilling conclusion as it did after we finished our cheese-steaks, they were surprisingly light and we managed to eat them in about 4 minutes, considering we spent over an hour waiting for them. Totally worth it!

We then went for the first bar we saw, sat down inside and ordered a local beer. We sat for a bit talking about this and that. After a while we noticed that there were a lot more females in this bar than average, mostly with short hair and baseball caps… not in a good way… we looked around us and noticed that there were a lot of girls making out! It turns out that we had managed to make our way to a lesbian bar! We decided to finish our drinks and move on, once the cross dressers walked in we downed them and left!

We found our way to the other bar district and moved from bar to bar, we sat in one student bar and played word association for about an hour! By ourselves! We had to prove to about 4 people that we were really English as well, which was annoying. We eventually ended up meeting a guy called Dom who showed us around and told us were was good to go. So we went and had a brilliant time, it was full of Latino’s who were buying us drinks and were really nice. When we left this place we met Dom again by chance outside, he said that he knew were there was a good after party type bar so we got in a cab with him and went on our way. When we got there it turned out to be some kind of ping-pong club/bar where people were playing ping-pong and drinking. It was very obscure. We figured that we were too tired to continue so we made our way back to the hotel and went and had a good sleep, our beds were amazing so we had to take advantage of it because we would be spending the next week or more sleeping on floors.

Me and Paolo with Dom

Mileage count: 10,880

States travelled so far: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.