Welcome to Philadelphia!
Recently, Scott and I decided to get creative and submit a video for the Wow Air travel guide contest. We did not win, but we had an amazing time exploring the City of Brotherly Love. There is a lot to do and see in Philly, so our goal was to focus on 5 key elements from the contest: Transportation, Food, Culture, Nature, and Nightlife. Wow Air, which is a budget-friendly Icelandic Airline, asked contestants to create short video travel guides of their home towns. The winners would be sent to other cities and towns to create travel guides for Wow Air social media. Luckily, Philly has a lot of fun and often free things to do and see. The below images were captured while filming our video and at the bottom of this blog is the video we submitted for the contest. Enjoy!
Philadelphia's Museum of Art. Tickets = $20 USD. However, on the first Sunday of the month from 10am-5pm and every Wednesday 5pm-8:45pm the Museum has a "Pay what you wish" option! Click the image to plan your visit.
Philadelphia is of course known for its history. The Liberty Bell and Independence Hall are free to visit. If somehow you haven't seen the movie National Treasure, you should watch it and then visit. There are multiple scenes in the movie that take place in and around Independence Hall.
Behind The Scenes
After hearing about the contest from my mom, Scott and I started brainstorming our favorite spots in Philly. We love to visit museums, but of course we couldn't show them all. It was not easy to narrow everything down.
As I mentioned before, the contest description highlighted a few elements that they wanted travel guides to focus on. When it came to culture, we knew that a free option for art lovers was the city's many murals. The Mural Arts Program in Philly is an incredible program that has really improved lives and made the city an incredible place to explore. Self guided tours are a great way to see all of Philly's most eccentric and infamous murals. South Street in South Philly has a great collection of them in a short distance if you are looking to save time.
For food, neither of us had ever actually eaten at Geno's or Pat's. (FYI - Both were delicious) When we first moved to Philly we lived in the Manayunk area and at that time we argued more over who had the best cheesesteaks - Dalessandro's or Chubby's. Every neighborhood has its favorite cheesesteaks, but Geno's and Pat's are certainly the most famous. I am not a fan of filming people eat, so for this part of the video I really wanted to time lapse our meals. We used a table top tripod to time lapse us both eating a cheesesteak and yes, people were very weirded out by this.
In regards to nature, we chose to highlight Wissahickon Park because it is our favorite. We use to live very close to the park when we first moved to Philly 4 years ago. It is a beautiful park all times of the year. If you get a chance, look up the Tedyuscung Statue and spend an afternoon looking for it.
The nightlife part of our video was especially difficult to make decisions about. There are so many fun places to drink and play bar games in the city. Spruce Street Harbor Park in Old City and Frankford Hall in Fishtown were both options but we chose Independence Beer Garden for its proximity to Philly's Historical attractions but also because it is beautiful and has a ton of games. Not only that but the food is great and we discovered from our waitress that Evil Genius Brewing Company and Yards Brewing Company (awesome Philly Craft Breweries) make special batches just for Independence Beer Garden.
Overall it took us 3 days to shoot all of the time lapses and all of Scott's lines in the various locations. I shot everything on both my Canon 5D and my iPhone 6s.
View from the top of Philly's Art Museum steps of the Philly Skyline, City Hall in center. You can run the steps like Rocky and pose at the top (See guy on the left)!
LOVE Park is right across the street from City Hall and has recently be renovated. I think taking a photo under the LOVE sign is required for all visitors. If you don't do it, then were you even really in Philly?
Our Travel Guide to Philadelphia, PA
Everything you see in our 2 minute video was written, shot and edited by Scott and myself over the course of a week.
We hope you've enjoyed watching and we've inspired you to visit Philly!
Let us know what you think in the comments below!
* All photos are copyrighted by Jessica Van Natten