Philly day for us
Trip Start
Jun 15, 2008
1
6
15
Trip End
Jun 29, 2008
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Friday, June 20, 2008
The Independence Hall tour was horrible, due to an awful Park Service guide. We could not understand his slurred monotone speech, and Ratko actually fell asleep. The tour consists of only two rooms. The first was a colonial courtroom and the second was the famous room where the the Declaration of Independence was signed
Independence hall
. The furniture was not authentic, though. So all that rushing to be on time, heavy security, waiting in line, and listening to the boring guide droan on and on was not really worth it. However, the outside grounds were beautiful, and the boys were thrilled to be at another National Treasure site. Because there are no bathrooms anywhere onsite, we had to leave before touring Congress Hall, so we really don't know what we missed there. We had originally thought to have bagels for breakfast before leaving New York, but realized that we didn't have time and planned to do drive-thru somewhere in Jersey, but we were so late by that time that we didn't dare. Luckily Ratko, Joey, and Ryan had eaten leftover pizza and cheesecake for breakfast. Alex and I had scavenged the car, with me eating a granola bar and he potato chips. So now by 1:40 we were ravenous and looked to the nearest food cart, which happened to be the famous Mom's Cheesesteaks that were rated best street food in the city by a national magazine. They did not disappoint! Even Ratko, who had previously eschewed street food, went back to order two more!
After that delicious lunch in the park, we headed for the security line at the Liberty Bell. It moved quickly and we were soon inside. Still pretty exhausted from walking all day yesterday in NYC, we didn't have the patience to read everything, and rushed right to the end where the bell was, fought the crowd to take some pictures, and got out of there.
Needing time for our drive to DC, we selected Ben Franklin Court as our last stop in Philly. His house is long gone, but the metal frame and glass covers over the ruins, such as his old privy, were interesting
Room where declaration was signed
. (Boys always love bathroom talk!) The underground museum was nice, with lots of his inventions, including some musical instruments. We were really tired though, so we didn't do it justice. Heading out of Philly we needed gas and the GPS took us on another wild goose chase, leading us to a non-existent gas station that is currently a large parking lot. There was some traffic through Wilmington, Delaware since it was now nearing 5pm, but from there on out it was great. Not even a problem in Baltimore. We had decided to stay between Baltimore and DC for the first weekend while we still had the car so that we wouldn't have to deal with DC traffic on a Friday evening.
Our Holiday Inn in Greenbelt, MD was great. With the Entertainment card, we got it for only $49/night. They wanted to charge us an additional $20/night for the rollaway bed, so we chose the free crib instead, offering Ryan $10 to sleep in it. He was happy to accept, but never got the chance. The room had a comfy easy chair and ottoman that Alex graciously volunteered to sleep on in lieu of sharing a double bed with Joey, so Ryan slept with Joey instead (which they had done very well at Aunt Donna's house). Having a microwave and mini-fridge in the room, we were able to shop at the grocery store nearby and fed the family 5 meals for $50. We were all too happy to crawl into bed knowing that all the long drives were now behind us.
We felt that we did not do Philly justice, but at least we saw the highlights. It would have been ideal to have a night there, but since we already had scheduled a total of 4 different places throughout the trip, we didn't want to move around any more. Maybe some day we will go back and really see the place.
