Day 2: The Road to Massachusetts

Got off to an interesting start this morning with an emergency alarm that woke us up at 4:30 in the morning. The recorded announcement said that there was an emergency, that we needed to stand by for further instructions, and to not use the elevators or fire escapes. Had no idea what was going on (fire? bomb? active shooter?) and just had to wait it out. Marsha could see fire trucks from the window and after a short while, they gave us the all clear to go back to bed.

Actual morning came a little early, thanks to that incident. We walked down to one of our favorite places for breakfast, Mrs. K's Koffee Shop. It's a great little diner in Olde City where everyone eats at a pair of U-shaped countertops.

We managed to explore Philly a bit more on the way back to the car. We finally checked out the Lits Brothers building up close, but weren't able to go inside (closed). And, of course, we had to walk through City Hall again, which is Matsha's favorite building.

The rest of the day was spent in the car. We ended up going through Princeton, so we took a quick detour to check out the university. Very stately and Old World. Reminded us a lot of Duke.

Having learned our lesson with DC, we opted to take the longer route this time and completely bypassed NYC (been stuck in that traffic before). We probably went a little further around it than we needed to (the GPS took us almost to Poughkeepsie before we turned east), but the upside was that we didn't have  any traffic.

We also had very little civilization. Mostly mountains and trees until we finally made it to Providence. We definitely saw a different view of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut (and sadly, the exit for Newtown and Sandy Hook). It was quite a relief when we finally reached Massachusetts and saw our first exit with more than two things listed on the sign since we left Philadelphia this morning.

Grabbed some take-out at Five Guys after we finally made it to Massachusetts. Since tomorrow is the Fourth, we're anticipating lots of traffic. Need to head out early to make sure we make it to the ferry in time.