Visiting Philadelphia

All this talk of the Declaration of Independence and the Continental Congress made me want to go to Philadelphia, so we did! Don't you love homeschooling? :)

We drove down on Friday morning, but unfortunately when we got there, the tickets for Independence Hall were all gone. They are free but there is a limited number of them. So, instead, we went to see the Liberty Bell (I wish you could still touch it), the US Mint (where you can see how they manufacture coins that we really use), the Christ Church Graveyard (where Ben Franklin is buried), Franklin Court (where Ben Franklin's house was and which also houses some buildings that belonged to him, the post office he began, and a museum in his honor), and the First Bank of the US (which is now housing a portrait gallery). We also took a carriage ride where we learned that Dolly Madison made peach ice cream, her husband James was really short, and that Jefferson, not Hancock, was the first signer of the Declaration of Independence. (Hancock signed big, but not first.)

On Saturday morning, I got up early to go get tickets to see Independence Hall. It was lovely being in the city all by myself :) I had forgotten how much I love cities, and Philadelphia in particular. We also found a yummy deli called DiBruno's, with great coffee and delicious pastries (and European candy and chocolate covered pretzels, and artesanal cheese and meats).

After breakfast, we went down to see Independence Hall and the room where they signed the Declaration of Independence, and wrote the Constitution. I liked it a lot. I think the kids did too. Sometimes I'm not sure what inspires them.

Next door, there was the actual copy of the Declaration that John Nixon read to the crowd in Independence Square on July 8, 1776. That was pretty cool.

Our next stop was the Franklin Institute, a great Science museum up on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway (at the end of which sits the gorgeous Philadelphia Museum of Art). It was late by the time we got there, so we started with Electricity... lots of hands-on exhibits to see how electricity works. And then we moved on to the heart, that you can walk through, and see how blood goes through your heart and gets oxygenated. The kids loved it. I think they went through the heart 14 times or so. There were lots of other blood and heart related things to touch and explore. As the museum closed, we went to the Imax theater to see "Dinosaurs Alive!" Sadly, it was disappointing. It was out of focus and didn't really take advantage of the Imax-ness of the theater.

After the museum, we went back to the hotel and then found a great restaurant called the Marathon Grill. It was pretty perfect: nice and loud so we didn't have to shush anyone, and good food that wasn't too normal or too expensive.

Sunday morning we decided to go back to the Franklin Institute. On the way, we found some Black reenactors commemorating Veteran's Day. We talked to them for a few minutes and they told us about a reenactment going on that day about the Revolutionary War. I really wanted to go but everyone else was so geared up to return to the Franklin Institute that that's what we ended up doing. I mostly felt bad that I hadn't thought ahead of time of looking up reenactments... I knew it was Veteran's Day. I should have thought of it. And it was too hard to change plans in the middle.

Anyways, once I made my peace with that, I could see how much the kids were enjoying the museum. In fact, the day flew by and we couldn't leave. We were planning on going by the place where Washington crossed the Delaware, but it was dark by the time we were on the road. So we'll just have to go back :)