Transylvania to Pennsylvania and beyond! Day 3 – Philadelphia to Phoenix

[BONZO]

Thursday 11th July 2019

Cast list (the usual):

Me: Shaun, Intrepid Traveller

Her: Alison, Slightly less intrepid traveler, but planner supreme and finds the good deals!

Trip Report Index HERE

We both had a really great night’s sleep (although woke up early because of the time difference) and lounged and drank coffee for a bit before getting up. The only trouble I have with the Loews beds is that they are so high and thick! I could really do with some steps to get on the mattress where I feel like the Princess and the Pea.

After the usual morning coffee, shower and dress we headed out for breakfast to Down Home Diner, a breakfast place nearby in the Reading Terminal Market that Alison had found, with items including scrapple and scram. Scrapple and scram I hear you ask?

Scrapple - Scrapple, also known by the Pennsylvania Dutch name Pannhaas or "pan rabbit", is traditionally a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour, often buckwheat flour, and spices. The mush is formed into a semi-solid congealed loaf, and slices of the scrapple are then pan-fried before serving. Scraps of meat left over from butchering, not used or sold elsewhere, were made into scrapple to avoid waste

Scram – Basically scrambled eggs with Ham, onions etc. chucked in, whatever you fancied

All of the food was as local as possible and freshly cooked to order, right up my street by avoiding chain restaurants etc. We finished off and looked around Reading Terminal Market – a popular and great looking place that would go down well in East London!

We walked down to check out the I love Philly sign and the famous LOVE sign and took some pictures, for some reason I thought it’d be huge but quite modest in size really.

We looked down one of the broad avenues and could see the Philadelphia Museum of Art or aka “the Rocky steps”. It was a bit too far to walk down to and I don’t think that running up the steps would be a good idea in this weather!

We wandered around the local area for a while and saw Pennsylvania station, and also some enormous Cluedo game pieces

but the heat and humidity was high and with limited time left we made our way back to the hotel to shower (again) and pack the few bits we had out. We decided to get an Uber rather than the train as the cost wasn't significantly more and less bother with our cases.

After checking into the Admirals Lounge we had a couple of coffees and Alison had a bowl of vividly coloured fruit loops

before walking to the gate and waited for boarding. We started to taxi out before we were told about some incoming bad weather, this meant that we had to be pushed back to the gate for more fuel due to re-routing to get round the storms. Overall, we waited for about an hour for the additional fuelling and some people were understandably getting anxious about connections. The crew were calm and kept everyone updated about the current situation. Finally we took off about 1 hour 40 mins late and we were on our way to Phoenix.

We had drinks and snacks on the ground before take off, then had a burger in a box (slightly odd but quite tasty) for our meal. All the ‘fixins’ came as sides to assemble your own burger! Finally we had warm cookies – yum!

I watched Magical Beasts all the way through this time as I’d given up previously

Alison watched Jumanji and the Greatest Showman (again – she loves that film!) Time appeared to move very slowly for me on this flight

but we eventually landed and my goodness the feeling of heat from outside was something else!

We eventually collected our luggage from a carousel but a little bit messy as there was building work happening at the same time. Finally we popped outside to get the bus to the car rental area. Luckily, all the car rental places where housed in one offsite facility, quite a neat idea really.

Outside was a little breezy but my goodness it felt like a furnace! A bit like opening the oven door and putting your head straight in! (it was around 42-43 degrees by this time!) Luckily the shuttle bus arrived pretty promptly and took us to the underground car parks. Not many people picking up cars but Avis and Budget had some small queues but there was no one at Dollar.

All very straightforward and we did agree that a Mid-Size SUV would be adequate for the pair of us, even if it was really overkill but I prefer the high seating position. We picked a Ford Edge from the queue for no reason apart from we’d used one before in the Smokie Mountains.

We spent a while in the car and sorted out the controls, including the all-important air-con, and headed off down the 51 and with only 1 minor detour we arrived safe and sound at the hotel 30 minutes later. We were staying at the Regency Hyatt Scottsdale at Gainey Ranch.

First impressions were good and the hotel had a typical Deluxe feel with a huge atrium and check in area, and was very open plan.

The guy on the check-in desk was really helpful and pointed out all the parts of the hotel and facilities. We made our way to our room and it was positively enormous with a huge balcony.

We dropped our bags down and went for a walk around the resort to get our bearings and see where the important stuff was like pool and bar areas.

We had a couple of games of corn toss

another throwback to the Smokies and Hilton Head, before going back to the room to shower and then check out the lounge facilities. The lounge was quite pleasant but busy with a number of young children around. I had a snack of Chinese chicken and rice and some soft drinks.

Back to the room afterwards for some coffee and cake before calling it a night at about 9pm – we are now GMT-8, so our body clocks are all over the place!

[Melbatb]

Not surprised your body clock is out of sync
A busy day - you sure do pack a lot in!