A weekend wedding brought us to my home state of Pennsylvania! Even though it was a quick trip, I still squeezed in some outdoor activities to enjoy the hills and lush spring greenery in Philidelphia.
Friday evening, we wandered over to the town of Conshohocken, a beautiful river town with small shops and restaurants. From a recommendation, we visited the restaurant named Daniel's (16 E First Ave, Conshohocken).
Daniel's had a great menu, homemade craft cocktails and a classic old-fashioned vibe with its hardwood bar and warm lantern lighting.
The homemade cocktail menu was so creative and well planned! Packed with tropical, classic and modern flavor combos. Our server mentioned they were working on a new menu of main dishes and desserts all made in house, like their cocktails. The smash burger was delicious too! Daniel's is definitely on our list for the next time we visit Philadelphia.
We ordered an Old Fashioned, Melon Salad, Grilled Octopus and a Smash Burger with a piece of Lemon Cake for dessert!
Saturday Morning, we visited Valley Forge Revolutionary War Site and National Park about 30 minutes outside Philadelphia.
This National Park has 35 miles of trails and contains 3,500 acres of meadows, woodlands, and monuments commemorating the American Revolutionary War of Independence from the British. Thousands of soldiers stayed here while the British occupied Philidelphia. Here's the parks official website.
For lunch on Saturday, we went to Ill Illiano's Pizza (24 E Ridge Pike, Conshohocken) for pizza! I had missed the Northeastern style pizza shops so much! from the oven baked stuffed shells and oven baked sandwiches, it felt like home! We don't have these wonderful things in Florida. The staff were amazingly kind, the food was delicious (best pizza I've had in whileeeee) and very well priced. #pureperfection
Now it's time for a Travel Money Chat! Above you can see what I spent in each of my categories for travel. I was hoping this would be a quick "cheap" trip for my boyfriend and I UNTILL we missed our flight from Tampa to Philidelphia, causing my most expensive travel mistake ever!!
So, I scheduled our Frontier flight for 5am on Friday morning (mistake #1) so we could land in Philadelphia by 8:30am and not disrupt our workday. I woke up at 4:30am and panicked! I immediately cancelled our flight thinking I could get a refund or reschedule (I've done this on Spirit Air - mistake #2) but got nothing back so we headed to the airport to see our options.
Pro Tip: If you miss your flight DO NOT CANCEL it, go to the airport and see the booking counter to help and for next steps AND you can still use your returning flight!
We found an American Airlines flight for later that morning - as we were scheduling, another person that missed their flight came up to the counter and asked for help. They put her on a later flight with no additional cost, this definitely made me re-think budget airlines that wouldn't do this for you.
We did do a few good money conscious items on this trip:
- Paid $178 for 2 nights in the hotel by using 50,000 Hilton Hotel points to get the cost down to $220 total and then getting a $50 statement credit for using a Hilton hotel this quarter!
- Got a great rental car rate of $140 for the weekend for the using work benefit rental call discounts
- Now for the bad.....
It cost us 800$ and 4 hours to rebook our flights and I was so excited to have a "cheap trip" 😠I will NEVER schedule a flight this early again! You'll notice this $800 is not in the image above of my travel spend, this is because I am still mad about it but of course I still am sharing for #traveltransparency.
Otherwise, we had an amazing time in Philidelphia. It was amazing to get a taste of home before my weeklong trip to my hometown of Pittsburgh in June!! Stay tuned and subscribe for that post and Keep reading to see my full itinerary (with costs)!
Thanks for Reading! - Lydia
Full Philidelphia Itinerary
As always here is a full review of everything we did and spent on this trip!