It's Always Sunny In...

Independence Hall

Every year my four best girlfriends from law school and I plan a "conference." It is our version of a girls weekend. When we first started the weekends consisted of getting drunk and eating. A few years ago we added an educational component in an effort to appear like we have grown up and our conference isn't just us reliving spring breaks from our 20's. We were all living in the northeast at the time and decided on a trip to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Commonly known as "The City of Brotherly Love", we, as native New Yorkers, adopted a conference slogan of "Brotherly Love, My Ass." New York and Philadelphia have a love hate relationship, much like New York and Boston. Obviously, this a result of inferiority complexes of both those cities when compared to the greatest city in the world. Every New Yorker reading that sentence just nodded their head in agreement and everyone else in the world shook their head, rolled their eyes and mumbled "cocky New York mother fuckers."

A Founding Father

As a group of former law students, we were extremely excited about the historical and political sites that only Philly can offer. We stood outside the glass of the Liberty Bell and stood in front of Independence Hall with wide eyes. We recited excerpts from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as we walked across the street to the Constitution Center. This was the opportunity to take our pocket constitutions to their Mecca. We spent hours wandering around the center, giving fake presidential press conferences, arguing about 1st Amendment cases, and posing inappropriately with founding father statues. Now that we had satisfied our educational component of the conference we got back to our roots of eating, drinking and general tomfoolery.

Me & Ben Franklin

We enjoyed taking pictures with the game board pieces in downtown. We climbed in the Monopoly wheelbarrow, posed with a bright yellow Sorry piece and Bingo chips. We ran up the steps of the art museum and randomly yelled, "Yo, Adrienne" in our most obnoxious Rocky voices all around the city. We bought food at the Italian Market and ate the most phenomenal brunch of our lives at Honey's. The atmosphere there would have made the worst meal still feel worth the trip so when the food came and we were all blown away it was like the heavens had opened up just for us. We spent three days eating, drinking, nerding and laughing our way through  Philadelphia. We took snide pictures in front of the LOVE statue, hugged the men and women giving our free hugs in downtown, and sang Will Smith's Fresh Prince's theme song over and over again without ever getting tired. We gave disgusted looks to every person we saw in Philadelphia Eagles attire one second and then giggled like school girls at the thought of Thomas Jefferson wandering the streets in the late 1700's. We could have stayed in Philadelphia for months and still never have been able to see all of the sites worthy of a visit, but as Philadelphia's favorite son, Ben Franklin, once said, "Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days."