Philly events

I have been quite lazy recently in blogging. Even my hubby felt so. This was partly due to me being occcupied with other stuff and also partly due to my own procrastination. For a start, I should try to blog about some of the major events in Philly in the recent months.

2008 COUNTDOWN

While there were plans for us to go to New York to take part in the countdown to 2008, we decided against it as the weather was too cold and apparently, we would have to stand in the cold from 6pm to get a good spot at Times Square. Hence, we spent 31 Dec 2007 in Philly, as we heard that the celebrations were equally good. On New Year's Eve, we joined the crowd for the countdown to 2008 and the fireworks at Penn's landing. The fireworks was awesome, a full 45-min worth of viewing pleasure. Furthermore, we found a good spot and were able to get a good view of the fireworks which was literally right above our heads. In fact, some soot from the fireworks fell on us! Here's a video clip of what it was like.




NEW YEAR'S DAY-MUMMERS PARADE

On New Year's Day, we went to watch the Mummers Parade which was apparently, one of the oldest and largest parades in US. In fact, the people who were participating in the parade came from all walks of life in Philadelphia, mainly the working class. For them to put up something like this is really commendable, these working adults would have to sacrifice their after-office hours to rehearse for the event. They even made their own costumes which was really funny. The Mummers Parade is a whole day event. Although it should start at 9 am, the actual thing itself did not start until noon due to a slight rain. We managed to catch the comics section of the parade along Broad Street before heading to Chinatown for lunch (which,by the way, is probably where restaurants stay open even during all major holidays in Philadelphia). We love the fun-loving nature of the people who took part in the parade. They would come up to us and joke with us. In the evening, we managed to get a seat among at wooden benches set up at the main judging area(Don't ask us how we did it) and we joined the crowd to watch the string bands. However, we finally succumbed to the cold as it was freezing and we decided to head home to watch the rest of the parade on TV. If I get a chance next year, I would watch the fancy brigades at the Convention Center next time, where it is indoors and and there are comfortable seats. Here are some of the photos taken during the parade, one of which is a funny shot of pigeons which were forced out of their territory and had to watch the parade from a distance.

Eclipse

I can't believe that I actually got to see a rare sight, a total moon eclipse, last night. I was actually waiting for the bus when an old lady came up to me and told me about the eclipse. The moon was right above me and it was starting to be covered in the shadow of the Earth. What a sight! Apparently, the next total lunar eclipse will be in the year of 2010. How lucky I was to have witnessed something so rare! Here's a picture that I snapped using my cellphone camera.

Year-end holidays in Las Vegas

Finally, my hubby had an almost 2-week break. After exploring the option of visiting South America or Mexico, we decided to abandon our initial plans to visit those places, as the air-tickets and hotels were too expensive. Instead, we decided to spend our vacanes in the US, given our limited budget. Hence, we ended up in Las Vegas as none of us had visited the place before and we also managed to find a relatively cheap package.

Off to Vegas we went. Our friends who had visited Vegas before gave us some tips before our trip, therefore, we were quite prepared for the trip. For example, we were not surprised to find that there were slot machines at the boarding gates and the baggage retrieval area in the airport. We were also not surprised when our hotel told us that we would have to pay $15 per night to borrow their coffee-making machine. While we like Vegas for its cleanliness(the streets are much cleaner than those in Philly) and spacious sidewalks, we were appalled at some of the prices of stuff. For example, a bottle of drinks can easily cost $3 at the convenience store in a hotel or a theatre.

While we were there, we watched two Cirque du Soleil's shows,'O' and 'Mystere', though I prefer the former to the latter. Mystere seems somewhate lacklustre, especially so after we watched 'O'. We felt that we should have gone for KA(which seemed somewhat more spectacular on the promotional video which was screened on the TV in our hotel room). We also managed to catch the David Copperfield's show. While I was not very impressed by the magic and the scale of the theatre(perhaps I have seen most of his best performances on TV), I found that he was really funny and he could really make the cut for a comedian.

Besides being famous for its show, Las Vegas is also famous for the many buffets in the hotels. We tried the buffets at Bellagio and Planet Hollywood(Spice Market) and we must admit that the latter is so much better in terms of quality of food. The range of food is much better at Bellagio but the cooking is so-so. The buffet at Bellagio also cost more.

On Christmas, we went a Grand Canyon tour. Initially, there were plans for us to rent a car and made a road trip. However, we decided against it as it would be too tiring to drive there 4 hours and try to make it back to Vegas in another 4 hours, all within a day. We wanted to relax and take things easy so we left the driving to our coach driver. He was very knowledge and funny too, so we were glad to have gone on the trip. Grand Canyon was really impressive but it was cold there(afterall, the viewing areas were located on higher altitudes). The next time we visit Grand Canyon, we would make a trip down to the bottom of the gorge and explore it from below. On the way back to Philly in the plane, we actually managed to see the Grand Canyon from above. Here are some of the shots along with photos of Las Vegas Strip itself.



Aerial view of Grand Canyon












The snow on the rocks at Grand Canyon
















Nightview of the Strip