East Coast Day #13 - Philadelphia!

Even though he's a little young, we decided to spend the day in downtown Philadelphia so that Ryan could be exposed to some American history and culture...so we took him to a few places we'd visited ourselves ten years ago.

While Rich waited in line for the Liberty Bell, Ry and I soaked up Independence Hall in all its splendor . The hall is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (a passion of mine to hit as many of those as I can). On this trip I learned that Abraham Lincoln was laid there for his funeral procession...which I never knew!

He was absolutely convinced (he insisted Grandma Janice told him so, but I know that she did not) that we would be allowed to ring the Liberty Bell. He was devastated to learn that I was right. Poor kid. (What the hell is wrong with City of Philadelphia that they won't let us all each line up and take a few swings at it? I mean, it's already broken.) ;-)

Where Congress once convened to debate/discuss

The actual room (virtually unchanged) where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were drafted and signed

Later in the day after chowing down on some delicious Philly cheese steaks, we walked over to the US Mint to watch the coin stamping assembly lines. We learned that of the four active US Mints, the PA one is the largest (and oldest). No pictures were allowed inside the mint. It reminded me a lot of our trip to the Federal Reserve Bank in NYC (where we went on a tour of the bank's underground vaults filled with gold bouillon) a few years ago...we really enjoyed it.

We finished off the historical part of our day by walking over to the Christ Church cemetery so we could visit Benjamin Franklin's grave. Later, Ryan would report to random people in a low, hushed voice-  "And this is really sad, but today we went to the grave of the man who is on the $100 bill..." 

Ben Franklin's final resting spot

We ended our day at Fairmount Park (I loved driving along the river and seeing all the crew houses!) so Ryan could run around & stretch out his legs a bit. Specifically, we hit Smith's playground and playhouse.

The famous 40-ft long wooden slide

The basement level at the playhouse...where our little driver always safely yielded to the traffic lights (it was beyond cute to watch).

All in all, we loved our day in the city and wished we could have had more time to recuperate so we could have seen Laurel and her family (I had to cancel since 2 out of the 3 us were hacking by this point) and checked out a few more sights in the city. But we were excited to head south to Atlantic City for some bright lights, tacky souvenirs and the boardwalk...