Wit or Wit-out?

There's nothing more satisfying than eating an amazing Philly cheese steak than in the place where it originated. Yesterday, my second "major" travel plans were completed. While I didn't ride the bus there with my friend James like we were going to originally, we did catch a ride with his dad and a friend of James', Sean. His dad dropped us off right in the middle of the University of Pennsylvania and we were on our own from there on!

Waiting for the Trolley

If there's one thing I learned about myself in those first few minutes is no matter how much I plan these trips out a) I always manage to lose my sense of direction and b) my plans never seem to work out anyways! It took us about 20 minutes to find and figure out how to use Philadelphia's public transportation system which uses little underground trolleys (how cute). After we got off in the center of Philadelphia we decided to go and find the best cheese steaks in Philly. It took us 30 minutes to get there (we almost got lost...twice) but we finally arrived to Pat's King of Steak, the establishment where the cheese steaks sandwhiches were born back in the 1930s!

My "provolone, wit" cheese steak...it was delicious!

I found this sign right above the menu and it cracked me up!

We didn't really go sightseeing which bummed me out a little but that just gives me an excuse to go and visit again. I didn't fall in love with the city (instead my love for DC grew) although that might have been because we didn't walk through the nicer parts of town to get to Pat's. I did notice that there were a lot of murals all over the place and we also saw the city hall from a distance.

Sadly because we spent more than an hour finding Pat's, eating and then traveling back to the University of Pennsylvania we did not get to hear the admissions information session. Sean, who's already visited a ridiculous amount of universities, told us that they all start to sound the same after a while and I don't doubt him on that. We did arrive in time for a campus tour though!

Blanche P Levy Park in front of College Hall where the tour began.

The University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) is similar to George Washington University in that it is in a major city...and that's pretty much where their similarities stopped. Even though UPenn is in Philadelphia, the Schuylkill River sort of separates it from the center of the city. I mean it still sort of had a city-ish feel since the streets were pretty busy but I think that's mainly because of the Hospital of UPenn. There was a lot of green areas which I really loved. I really liked the University of Pennsylvania period. They have 16 libraries (!), 104 different languages are taught, (I didn't even think there were that many to begin with!) they are very flexible in terms of grad requirements, (You need to take at least one class from 7 main disciplines as opposed to having a required set of classes) and have funny traditions. Like one of them is a toast on the third quarter after every home football game...except since drinking in the stadium was banned in the 1970's fans literally throw actual toast into the field!

And of course one of the most attractive things about UPenn is that it is home to the Wharton School, the first business school (and consistently highly ranked) in both the US and the World. The building was pure beauty. I was briefly able to see some really high tech classrooms and there was this big study area type lounge which is pictured below. Our tour guide joked that the Wharton School must have been built with a campus tour built in mind because it's so bold and just screams selective. And selective it is after he told us that only 9% of applicants are accepted...

After the campus tour ended we went and chilled in UPenn's bookstore which is by far the largest one I've seen in any university. It was like a Barnes and Nobles but with an apparel section (which I of course went and bought a t-shirt from!) I reviewed the little packet that we were given at the beginning of the tour and kept on finding little things that made me like UPenn more and more. This is definitely a college I am going to revisit and most likely apply to!

UYL,
Andre