The Time I Visited Three Cities in One Day

No matter how you get there or how much you love it, travel can wear you out. That’s why people always say, “You must be tired from traveling.” Or “I need a vacation after my vacation.” Because it’s true.

I always forget how exhausting traveling can be until I’m in the thick of it. But nothing compares to the time I saw three cities in one day. Over four years ago, my family and I traveled from Pittsburgh to Atlantic City, stayed overnight, and then toured Philadelphia and Washington D.C. the next day. Voluntarily. Without realizing the toll it would take on our mood, our bodies, and our experience.

Was it a good idea?

No.

Did everything work out? In the end, yes.

Here’s my experience of the time I visited three cities in one day.

Planning the trip

The main purpose of the trip was so that my parents could go to a concert in Atlantic City. It was not a band I liked, and it was a band that my sister had already seen. But we had never seen Atlantic City, not that it was high up on our travel bucket list. But it would be a good place to go just to say we went. And it was only about six hours by car from Pittsburgh to Jersey.

We also planned to stop in Philadelphia the next morning since we had never been there either. Non-Pennsylvanians tend to think that Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are right next door to each other. But Pittsburgh is on the western part of the state, closer to Ohio, while Philadelphia is just an hour away from Atlantic City.

Philadelphia is also less than three hours away from “our nation’s capital,” as Forrest Gump would say. It was a place we had visited a few years earlier. But there were more sites that we wanted to visit and monuments that we wanted to see again. So, we’d add another day to the trip to try to hit all three destinations within 24 hours.

PA to NJ

It was early on a Friday morning when I drove over to my parents’ house and loaded my overnight bag in the car to set off for Atlantic City. It wasn’t a bad ride. We got to see a side of Pennsylvania that we hadn’t before. We passed by mostly farmland and small towns that dot the landscape between these two cities.

Despite avoiding the turnpike, we found ourselves on several toll roads and bridges leading to Delaware and then on into New Jersey. Our GPS proved to be unreliable in avoiding these tolls. We got a taste of the roads that east coast commuters avoid like the plague. There was an especially treacherous bridge in Delaware that we crossed that seemed to be built on a slant and then drop off into the river. From what I’ve heard about Delaware, that’s probably the most interesting thing in the state.

Atlantic City

New Jersey is known as The Garden State. As we crossed the border into it, I began to see why. There was tons of flat farmland heading into the state. It seemed to be more colorful than the dull yellow cornfields in PA. Added to that was a bright blue sky with salty air that signaled the sea was near.

From a distance, Atlantic City looked like any other beach town with its skyline full of hotels. We stayed in a real dive of a hotel with sticky floors, broken beds, and a tacky underwater mural on the wall that did little to convince us that we were undersea.

After we checked in, we headed down to the beach which was just a block away. Immediately, the smell of garbage hit us as we stepped onto the sand. We took pictures on the beach and watched a few brave swimmers jump waves in the sewage-smelling ocean.

The boardwalk

The boardwalk was a little better. It had a wooden deck to walk across bordered by various food vendors, arcades, and casinos. We walked up and down, trying to decide on a place to eat. Most of the restaurants sold their food from glass cases beneath outdoor counters. Everything looked as if it had been sitting out all day in the flies and heat.

So, we decided to walk up a few blocks to a Dominoes. The inside of the pizza place was too small for more than two people to stand in let alone find a place to sit. So, we stood outside while they made our pizza. It was a bad part of town. We had passed broken needles on the ground and some really rough-looking guys on our way there. I was relieved when our order was up. Then, we walked back to the boardwalk to eat.

Gull attack

We sat on a bench while the sea air whipped at our hair. We had to hold onto our paper plates and napkins as we inhaled our slices of the pie and held cans of Diet Coke between our legs. I was halfway through my second piece when a huge seagull swooped down at me, bellowing its shrill war cry, its legs outstretched inches from my face, attempting to grab my dinner by the crust.

My goal in life is to not draw attention to myself. But out of pure instinct, I let out a scream that I could only replicate if someone stabbed me in the chest. I ducked and stood up, running straight into a crowd of startled people walking by.

The bird flew away, and I sheepishly made my way back to the bench and my stunned family. A man selling snow cones nearby laughed at me and said, “You gotta be careful. I’ve seen them rip food right out of people’s hands.”

I would have asked if they ever took the hands with them, but I was too busy burying my head in the sand on the other side of the railing.

After we ate, my parents headed to the concert, and my sister and I kept touring the boardwalk, checking out the end we hadn’t yet explored. We went into some souvenir shops and arcades but didn’t find much to see or do in them.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum and the hotdog man

Then, we came across a Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum. Hoping to kill an hour or so, we paid for a ticket and went in. This turned out to be the best museum I’ve ever visited. We were in there for over two hours. It was so large and full of stuff to see that I could have stayed another two.

Once outside, we started to head back towards our hotel. On our way, a man stopped us and began to plead for spare change. “I’m from Minnesota and need eighty cents for a hot dog.” They were selling hot dogs for under a dollar on the boardwalk. But I didn’t know how being from Minnesota played into that.

“Please!” he begged and continued to follow us until I told my sister to run, and we did, blending into a group of teenage boys before ducking into the Taj Mahal hotel and casino. My sister was underage at the time. So, we didn’t stay to gamble, just to admire the tacky décor.

By then, the casino scene was already a dying industry in Atlantic City. Even Pittsburgh had its own casino by then, creating less of a need to come to Atlantic City to get a gambling fix. But we weren’t here to gamble or drink. That, mixed with a gross beach and mainly kid-friendly activities leftover made it a place I wouldn’t want to visit for more than a day.

Leaving Jersey

We woke up early the next morning and stopped at a gas station to fill the car before heading to Philadelphia. My dad had just taken the nozzle off the pump when a man came running out, calling for my dad to stop.

“Hey! I’m here!” he cried, jogging over.

“I’ve got it,” said my dad, who pumped gas regularly. In fact, we all did.

“No, state law. I have to do it.”

“But he used to pump gas for a living!” my mom called out the open window, referring to my dad’s early 20’s working as a gas station attendant.

He’d spent nearly his entire working life in the car industry. So, the fact that he had to stand by and watch a young guy fill up his car was pretty comical.

After that quick lesson in New Jersey state law, we stopped in a McDonalds for breakfast where we ate stale McMuffins. But we were in Jersey. What were we going to say? The night before, a woman in a souvenir shop had forcefully moved me out of her way so that she could get down an aisle to look for a “dohr-stawp” for her hotel room door. You didn’t want to mess with them.

A short tour of Philly

One short hour later, we made it to Philadelphia. There was a familiarity to the city with its old, stone buildings and winding roads and ramps that reminded me of Pittsburgh. But it didn’t feel like home.

It was hard to maneuver around. Our first stop would be the Rocky steps, but the streets around the museum were closed off due to some marathon or walking event. So, we drove around in circles for several minutes looking for a place to park.

We were agitated and miserable by the time we got to the stairs. So, it wasn’t a very happy visit. We climbed the steps, took some pictures, and looked out over the back of the museum to an image identical to the one you see in the iconic shot.

Once we were back on the road, we headed over to Independence National Historical Park. There, you’ll find all of the Revolutionary War artifacts and buildings. We parked on a side street, unsure of whether or not we had to pay since it was the weekend. No one around us could give us a straight answer, but they warned us that parking on these streets in general wasn’t a good idea. But we decided to chance it and took off for the nearby green.

Plan ahead

Once we got to the buildings, we went inside to get tickets for some of the tours. These tours were free, but without booking in advance, they said that it could be several hours before we got in. And we wanted to be in D.C. by lunchtime. So, we walked around for a little while and saw what we could from the sidewalks, peeking through a window to get a glimpse of the Liberty Bell as the line stretched out the door. I wasn’t that excited to see a bell with a crack in it anyway.

One thing I was hoping to get was a cheese steak, but it was still way too early for the sandwich restaurants and vendors to open up. So, we decided we’d had enough of Philly and set out for D.C.

I was glad to be out of there, and we later learned we had taken a risk by parking our car on the street. Apparently, they have a reputation for getting broken into or even stolen. We didn’t want to get stranded in Philly with a car whose tires had been removed.

Washington, D.C.

The weather in Atlantic City and Philadelphia had been comfortable for mid-July. But heading south, we found that we were heading into temperatures of 100 degrees or more in our nation’s capital that day. The heat hit us like an oven as we exited the car and made our way to the Holocaust Museum, a site we hadn’t gotten to on our first trip years earlier.

It was air conditioned inside, but my mom had brought along bottled water to drink as we walked. I was holding a bottle as we stepped through security. I was the last in my family to go through the metal detectors. At the conveyor belt where my purse was being scanned through, a small but moody security guard told me and a teenage girl behind me to take the caps off of our water bottles and take a sip of our drinks.

“Take a sip?” the girl behind me innocently asked for clarification.

“Girls, I told you to take a sip of that water. Now take a sip!” she barked at both of us.

I wanted to ask, “What did I say? This girl isn’t even with me!”

But instead, we both complied without a word, and she waved us through with a sigh.

It was crowded and somber inside the museum. Though it’s free, you needed an additional ticket to tour the best parts of it, and we were again too late to get one for a decent time. So, we saw what we could and then headed onto the next site.

The White House and Ford’s Theater

Our next stop happened to be The White House. By now, it was midday, and it was sweltering. Hoards of people lined the fence surrounding the house. This was the era of the selfie stick, and people were waving them around like maniacs trying to get a shot of themselves with the house in the background.

The close quarters on the sidewalk made it even more hot and miserable as the sun beat down on us, and there was no shade to shield us from it. So, we headed away from the White House to Ford’s Theater on 10^th Street. Happy to be back in the A/C, we ordered tickets for a tour. Luckily, it was a short wait before our tour started, though we had to line up back in the heat before we were ushered into the theater.

It was nice and cool inside, and it was the easiest part of our day, sitting and listening to a historian lecturing about the night Lincoln was shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth and the massive manhunt that ensued. You know. That happy story.

Afterward, we were led across the street to the home where they brought Lincoln in a failed attempt to save his life. The end of the tour took us through a gift shop which led back out into the heat.

Dinner and The National Mall

The rest of the day was more of the same, transitioning from the hot sun to the cool museums as we toured a lot of the same places as our first trip. By the time we had seen most of the Smithsonian, it was dinnertime. We stopped at a Subway on our way back towards the National Mall. Having missed out on a cheese steak in Philly, I took the opportunity to order the fast food version of one there.

After dinner, we made our way back to the mall. Despite it being early evening, the sun was still brutal, baking down on the monuments as it slowly set behind the trees. What water we had left was warm, even after filling it at a nearby water fountain.

Luckily, the World War II memorial features large water fountains. They’re usually meant just for looking, but people were wading in the fountains trying to cool off. We did the same, and it helped for a bit. The following week at home, I read an article reprimanding tourists for disrespecting the monument by wading in the fountain. I stopped myself from commenting to the writer of the article that had they been there in 100 degree heat, they would have done the same.

I’ve never seen the monuments lit up at night, and under different circumstances, I would have liked to have waited for it to get dark enough to see them illuminated. But we were so soaked that you could have wrung us out like a rag. We were so tired and sore that we looked like robots following the sidewalk back to the street where we’d parked our car.

Three cities in twenty-four hours

We spent the night in a hotel about a half hour from D.C. It was all we could do to make it from the car to our room that night. I think what I learned from this trip is to take the time to see what you want to see, especially when you want to see a lot. We should have spent a full day at each of these cities and really taken in the sights and planned ahead to make sure we got to see everything we wanted to see.

At the same time, the speed and efficiency with which we toured these cities gave us a unique story to tell. Looking back, we had more experiences, encounters, and memories than we could count. It took looking at some of my pictures to remember some of them.

So much of our lives are redundant and dull. So, it’s nice to have these weekends where so much happened that it was dizzying. No matter how you choose to travel, make sure you do it on your terms and that, good or bad, you leave no stone unturned.

What is the most exhausting trip you’ve ever taken? Share your stories in the comments below!

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