Popeadelphia

Pope Francis is coming to Philadelphia this weekend!  After visiting Cuba, Washington DC, and New York, the Pope is coming to Philly to participate in the World Meeting of Families conference all weekend long.  We've been hearing about the visit for months but things really kicked into gear over the summer when closures and the final schedule was announced.  At the end of August, my office announced that due to the crazy train schedules, road closures, and extra security, we'd be closed on the Friday and Monday of the visit. Although the Sooys are not attending any of the festivities or masses this weekend with Pope Francis, it was still neat to watch the city transform in preparation.

On Sunday night, major parking restrictions were in place and that was evident first thing Monday morning when Market Street was clear of parked cars and there was considerably less traffic (also, large clusters of port-a-potties were springing up all over Center City)

On Tuesday, the "Pope Fence" started to go up around the secure perimeter which includes the Ben Franklin Parkway.

I took a quick walk up there during lunch to see what I could see.  The stage and the bleachers were getting set up at Eakins Oval.

The Parkway looks like it does before a major race like the Philly marathon, but with more HD screens and Secret Service.

Greeting Pope Francis, the Philly way:

And a last shot of the Ben Franklin Parkway before I left work on Wednesday:

Philly is excited, and judging by this video, Pope Francis is looking forward to the visit, too.

The 'Burgh

We're out of order here, but we started out on our Michigan trip on Tuesday afternoon and drove for hours and hours and hours across Pennsylvania.  We ended up spending the night just East of Pittsburgh.

In the morning, we went to downtown Pittsburgh to see what we could see, including Pittsburgh's rush-hour traffic and this mult-lingual elevator:

It's not a Sooy vacation unless we see a funicular!

We let the kids run around Ft. Pitt while we snapped pictures of the city.

The kids really liked the fountain - the morning was already getting hot so it offered a refreshing mist.

We also got a nice view of PNC Park and Heinz Field:

After a loooooong walk back to the car, we drove over one of the many bridges in Pittsburgh and headed Northwest towards our next stop - Cleveland!

First day of school

Sean's had a good week of First Grade and Clare is loving Pre-K!

Cleveland Rocks

For Labor Day this year, we took the kids on a looooooong road trip up to Michigan but we made a few stops along the way and on the way back.  One of our stops was in Cleveland.  First, we saw the house from "A Christmas Story".  The house offers tours but both kids were sleeping and I just really wanted to see the outside of the house...

and the LEG LAMP!

Afterwards, we moved on to downtown Cleveland:

We stopped for a couple of hours at the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame:

Chrissy Hynde's Porsche:

The kids look at this "little TV" at an exhibit about the origins of Rock:

A special section about Pink Floyd:

There were plenty of stations to stop and sample music - Sean found he really likes Michael Jackson' "Thriller"...

And Clare found a new favorite, too:

 Cars from the U2 Zoo TV Tour:

Phish's Flying Hot Dog Car:

Walking back to the car, Clare and Sean started holding hands while watching a stunt plane practice over Lake Erie...