Yeah, the Liberty Bell is pretty cool. But Independence Hall is the shit. They have this courtroom, where I'm sure they sentenced a lot of people to hang ('cause they didn't mess around back then). And then we saw where they signed the Declaration of Independence, without a doubt the best thing ever turned out by a bunch of politicians. The National Parks guy told how Washington could have declared himself emperor with the support of the army, and about why they put Jefferson on the committee to write the Declaration (cause he was a southerner and all), and about how Caesar Rodney (who's on the Delaware coin which is cool unlike the weak Georgia coin with the goddamned peach [ed: Peaches!]) rode to the Continental Congress to sign the Declaration, even though he was dying of cancer [ed: He had face cancer, so his face was all eaten away and nasty and so he had to wear a scarf around his face 'cause if he didn't people would scream in horror 'cause he looked like Darkman. Yeah, that guy kicked ass]. In short, it was great, because all those guys were really damn cool. They need to take Al Gore up there and cane his ass until he knows the difference between the Declaration and the Constitution (you see, 'cause there was the one time when he read part of the Preamble and then referred to it as the Declaration of Independence and.... Oh never mind, go back to watching the WWF or the WCW or whatever, it doesn't matter any more).

Well, enough life and liberty for one day. Time for the pursuit of happiness (I'm talking about booze, in case you haven't grasped the meaning of this trip yet). When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to drink some authentic revolutionary beer, they go to the City Tavern in Philadelphia (which is part of the National Park [ed: state-sponsored booze rocks!]). It first opened 1773, but burned down and was demolished in the 19th century. It was rebuilt by the National Parks Service and reopened in 1976. It's got great period décor and all the staff is in colonial-esque dress. Although it's primarily a very expensive restaurant, they have a nice little bar on the first floor, where they serve some wicked patriotic brew. The centerpiece is the George Washington ale, a homebrew-style porter-like concoction. It's made from Washington's own recipe found amongst his papers. We also sampled the Thomas Jefferson Ale, a modernized version of one of his beers, the Franklinfest (a Märzen), and the pilsner. Brewers and patriots, the land that I love.

We trekked our way across downtown, through the diamond merchant district to the Sam Adams bar (why this is in Philadelphia and not Boston I don't exactly know). But the damn thing was closed! Boarded up, with some bizarre alcohol license notice on the door. Oh well. I mean we can get Sam Adams anywhere, and we've got plenty of Triple Bock stocked up.

We kept on going and got to Monk's. Or more exactly Monk's Back Bar, tucked away in the um, back. For some reason Philadelphia has a Belgian restaurant with an impressive selection of obscure beers. It was really hot inside, so we had to hang our sport jackets on the back door. They had a good dank going on, and to Philly's credit, the place was pretty packed (if this bar was in Atlanta people would just stare slack-jawed and order a Bud). We both started with the Cantillion lambic. It's always awesome when I get to try a new lambic, and this one was a tart bastard. Some kind of messed up gueze thing, and without a doubt the tartest beer I've ever had [ed: How tart was it? It was so tart that it made my ass pucker up. Ha! It doesn't make any sense, but, ha!]. We split off then and had some more weird-ass tart beers. I had Leifman's Goudenbond (I have no idea what that means [ed: It means: Graham is awesome and Curtis is just a dumb dummy who can't speak Belgiumese]) and Graham had the Oerbier. We didn't really scratch the surface-they had another nine beers on draft and hundreds of strange things in bottles. Belgians. They make good beers, but they don't have the good sense to get the hell out from between France and Germany.

North, to the Dock Street Brewing Company! Trés upscale. This is the place where the young, upwardly mobile Philadelphians congregate for craft brew and expensive food. We got some kind of appetizer sampler. I didn't write down what we had, so I guess that information is lost. I do remember eating some kind of ravioli thingy later on. We both started out with the cask conditioned Savage Ale (a strong ale). Then we got their pumpkin ale and märzen. I also quaffed pints of the alt and Irish stout (I know I know, I have a problem).

We staggered back to the station and caught our train. There was some sort of AIDS foundation poster on the train, which triggered a heated, drunken argument over the state-of-the-art in drug treatments. I contended that there are new experimental drugs, mostly ones based on gene therapy, that reduce the concentration of the HIV virus to undetectable levels without any serious side effects. Graham steadfastly maintained that all the effective drugs do in fact have noticeable side effects that are generally as bad as AIDS and that I didn't know what the hell I was talking about [ed: This is true]. We never actually settled the argument (we usually don't [ed: No, we settled it. Curtis finally gave up and said, "Graham is always right and he's awesome and he knows everything about everything," but he was too drunk to remember saying that, so don't bother asking him if it's true.]), because the debating is the fun part.