Last week my husband came down with a cold at the beginning of the week and I cursed him because I knew I was going to catch just in time for the end of the week when I couldn’t take off work on Friday and then had to leave immediately following for a bachelorette weekend in Philly. Sure enough that’s exactly what happened.

Friday was the most miserable of the days. I managed to suffer through work. There was a lot of resting my head on my desk in between the stuff I had to be there for. After work I met up with friends to begin our journey up to Philadelphia for a double bachelorette party weekend.

My friend Alison is getting married in April and her best friend is getting married in December. They have a number of friends in common so decided to plan a joint bachelorette party weekend and settled on Philly as the location because it’s a fun city and it was easy for most people attending to get to. The people coming from the Baltimore/DC area met up at my house and then we began our journey up to Philly with a pit stop at the Birroteca in Bel Air for dinner.

It was around 10:30 when we got to the hotel. I offered to take the pull out sofa bed in our suite since that meant I would sleep alone and hopefully not get anyone else sick. Plus I’m a horrible sleeper so I was hoping that having a bed to myself would allow to sleep a little bit better. That might have worked ok (the sofa bed was not at all uncomfortable) if the suite was not the most dumbly designed hotel room. Why would you put tile floors in a hotel room? Every step of the people upstairs echoed. They also seemed to have a penchant for moving the furniture around. It was quite loud and not conducive at all for sleeping.

Despite what felt like not a great night’s sleep I woke up feeling much better on Saturday. I was definitely still sick, but I felt a lot better than on Friday. We eventually all ambled our way over to Reading Terminal Market for breakfast. I decided to stand in the line for the Amish donuts. Last time I was in Philly for a conference everyone was talking about those donuts, but I couldn’t make it to the market until Sunday and they’re closed then because you know, Amish. They were good, but not the best donuts in the world.

We basically just hung out at the market until it was time for us to head to Yard’s Brewing for a tour. Our group had a private tour. Our tour guide was very amusing, and I felt like I learned stuff even though I’ve been on many a brewery tour at this point in my life. We hung around the tasting room for awhile after that. I was pleased that they had some home brewed root beer on tap so that I had something to drink.

After that we found a place nearby for lunch as it was already 2 pm at that point. Apparently we hit them during their kitchen changeover from brunch to dinner. The waitress did warn us it would take awhile, but I don’t think any of us were really counting on lunch taking 2 hours. The food was good at least and it was nice to chat with some people I either hadn’t known before the weekend or didn’t know very well.

I took the opportunity to go back to the hotel and rest up for a few hours before dinner. So basically I spent my whole day eating as an activity. I’m ok with that. Dinner was at an Italian restaurant called Panorama. I can’t say much for it. The food was ok, but nothing spectacular and the service definitely left something to be desired. Dinner took even longer than lunch clocking in at 3 hours and there were several other missteps. Again the company was good, but by the time we were done with dinner I was spent and headed back to the hotel while a few people went out for drinks.

Sunday a couple of us got up early enough that we headed over to the Italian Market area and walked around and popped into some very delicious shops. In one of the shops the woman working there was plying us with many samples of cheese and salami. It worked though since it’s the one place bought anything in.

We ended the weekend with brunch at a French restaurant called Parc. It was delicious and the service was actually good so double points for them. About half the group hung around Philly for the afternoon, but I took my leave at the end of brunch. I felt a little bit like a party pooper with my stupid cold, but hopefully the bachelorettes had fun.

My friend Erin lives just outside of Philly, so I wanted to stop by and see her before I left town and meet her new baby. It was nice to see her and meet the smiliest baby in the world. Her mom recently brought her copies of our middle school yearbooks, so she was showing me those. For some reason either we or one of our friends wrote our names under the pictures of the two school librarians. Seems kind of prescient now at least in my case. We were both remarking on how we had no idea what any of the inside jokes I wrote about to her in the yearbook meant. At was great to see her even if it was just for a couple of hours. Hopefully we can see each other again soon when I have a little bit more time to spend together.

Finally, on my way home I stopped at my friends’ Kevin and Tracie’s house because they were hosting a get together for our group of friends to see our friends Dawn and Darren who emigrated to New Zealand a number of years ago. They were back in the States visiting over the past few weeks and were in Maryland over the weekend. It was great to see them and catch up in person. I was definitely dragging by that point though and skipped out when everyone was going outside to sit around the fire pit. Tracie was like I can’t believe you’re leaving before s’mores. You love s’mores. I do, but I was too tired and sick to stick around any longer.

Overall it was a great weekend with lots of great friends. I just wish I hadn’t been sick for all of it. I of course was perfectly better to go to work on Monday because that’s how these things work. I was hoping I would feel just sick enough to take a sick day, but I did not and I’m not the kind of person who would ever take a sick day if I’m not actually sick.