I was up for a small road trip, I had a Living Social Adventures deal for yoga and wine tasting, and my friend had never been to Philly so we set the dates, packed up the car, and headed south on the good old Jersey Turnpike. The weather was perfect for our trip – not too windy, the sun was shining, and temps were in the mid 70’s. We arrived in Philly around 2:30pm and found an awesome parking spot on the street near the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.
Now, I’ve been to Philly several times before and I always park in the garage. It’s easy, it’s convenient, and it’s cheaper than most parking garages in NYC (enough said). Don’t ask me why, because I’m not sure why I thought it would be a good idea to deviate from the norm, but have you only live once right?
We visited Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, then decided to take a bus tour. I moved the car into the garage where I should have left it for the night because we knew we wouldn’t be back to feed the meter and we had already seen several cars get towed.
The bus tour was a really relaxing way to see the city and we were able to get on an off when we wanted to spend time more time at a particular location.
After the bus ride we explored on foot
Full bellies, new ink, and a desire to dance with picked up the car from the garage and looked for places to go dancing. The sounds of salsa and bachata drew us in to a cute little place in Old City. We parked the car, put on our heels,and went inside to dance the night away. We emerged from the club around 2:30am only to get to the block where I parked the car and found that is was no longer there, and there was actually someone else parking in the spot.
Yes, it happened (que dramatic music). I had become a victim of parking wars….we reread the sign 3 times to try and determine the reason for towing and finally found the answer midway down the pole….a handicap sign the size of my iPhone. Awesome. Clearly my fault, but a bigger sign or perhaps some verbiage where the rest of the parking guidelines were would have been helpful.
We cabbed it over to the impound lot where many others were waiting, all victims of the Philly parking system. Everyone had a different story and only a few people seemed to be in bad spirits. I think most of us were all so tired that all we could do was laugh at the situation, and I laughed until I nearly cried. $150 and an hour or so later we were able to pick up the car, but not before receiving an additional fine of $301 to be paid within 30 days.
Exhausted, we head back to the house and ended up falling asleep before setting any alarms. When we finally woke up we realized that we completely missed the Living Social Yoga Adventure so we cracked open a bottle of champagne, made breakfast, and laughed over mimosas. In the end, the trip was definitely one for the books. We’ll never forget it that’s for sure lol.
Philly was an adventure, but we couldn’t wait to get back to NYC. Do you have any trip disaster stories? How did you turn the situation around?
Love AGT :)
A Girl Travels 