Day 16: Philadelphia, PA

So the day before we checked once again on our visas’ status on-line. Finally, it had changed from something like “what visa are you fucking talking about” to a more “oh yeah, we have made a decision”, not stating what it is exactly that was decided. We assumed, of course, that had there been a problem, they would have let us know. So now we need to track the envelopes that we gave the French consulate in which our passports should be sent back to us. However, nothing yet at that point.

We didn’t want to arrive at Julia’s parents’ place before they do, so we decided to make a detour and stop by Philadelphia. We found a bar in which the special of the day was Philly cheese-steak sandwich and beer. Of course we had to go in, even more so since we both never had a Philly cheese-steak sandwich. I liked it. And the beer.

Philadelphia is, well, interesting. Very different than any city I’ve been to:

We walked on and stepped into the big indoor marketplace, and wandered there for a long time. Then we went to see the liberty bell, but only from the outside, since we didn’t want to stand in line. We also checked out a religious bookstore. Just for fun. We were pretty stressed about the visa situation at this point. We called Lady B. I’ve mentioned her before as the lady who takes care of MIT students going on internships in France. We’ve been trying to communicate our stress since this whole thing started going wrong, but from some reason she is not getting it. We explained the situation to her – We’re going to be in Baltimore, and our visas are processed, but our passports, which are still in Boston, haven’t been sent, and if they are not sent by tomorrow morning – we’re fucked. She said she’ll email the consulate and ask to come herself, pick up the passports, and mail them to us. We fell slightly, just slightly better, knowing that she has waken up and might take some actions.

We left Philadelphia and drove to Ellicott City MD, near Baltimore, where Julia’s parents live. Her sister, along with her corgy dog were there. We had dinner and went to bed seriously frustrated.