Philadelphia & Lancaster County

With the Martin Luther King Jr holiday giving us a long weekend, we set off on the roughly 2.5 hour drive to Philadelphia on Saturday 19 January 2008.

After $22 in tolls (welcome to America!), we arrived around lunchtime so we went straight to the Reading Terminal Markets. Despite Donna's research describing these as food and craft markets, there was little more than food on offer. (I have just pointed out that a check of the merchants on their website would have indicated this but apparently it isn't as obvious as I make it out to be ...) So after a good souvlaki, we had a quick visit to the visitors centre before checking in at our hotel. The reviews on the Comfort Inn Historic Quarter were a bit mixed but generally positive so we went for it due to the central location and the cheap rate. It was sandwiched in under the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and a multi level freeway but was pretty ok. The road and train noise was drowned out by the noisy air conditioning so wasn't much different noise wise to trying to sleep on a train. The included breakfast each morning was very good with lots to choose from, including my US favourite of the cook it yourself waffles (2 minutes from batter to yum!)

We braved the cold to walk back into the city past Penn's Landing. Finding ourselves walking past Christ Church, we headed in for a look just in time to catch a tour that was starting. While the nearly 300 year old church (312 years of a church on the site) was full of scaffolding inside (the early days of a 27 year restoration) the guide was full of history about the building, the church and its history. Like the fact the church has clear glass panes with the idea of not separating what happens inside and outside the building rather than the more traditional stained glass. Was a good starting point to learning about the area.

We headed off to The Liberty Bell Centre to see the famous bell. Was already aware that the bell was cracked and that I couldn't ring it so I wasn't too disappointed. :-) Was getting late so we had a bit of a wander around a couple of touristy stores on the way to seeing Benjamin Franklin's gravesite. The cemetery was closed over winter so had to settle for looking through the fence, luckily they planned ahead for tourists with Mr and Mrs Franklin buried right on the corner of the cemetery. The kids had to put a penny on the grave, we didn't understand why the pennies were being placed on the grave and from this site, it seems that others don't either. Finished our wandering around at the National Constitution Centre. However decided the value wasn't there for the $40 it was going to cost to go inside so we didn't get past the gift store. After a quick dinner we were glad to get back to the hotel and out of the cold.

We woke on Sunday morning to a sunny morning with temperatures again around -8 but down to -18 with wind chill factored in. Needless to say we didn't rush out. After our leisurely breakfast, we hitched a ride with the hotel's courtesy bus to Independence Hall. It was here that the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Constitution of the United States was debated, drafted and signed. Due to the cold, we weren't made to wait outside for a tour but were allowed to wander through, with the National Park rangers in each room talking about features of the room and what happened there. The Greek revival style building next door was originally the Customs House, then home to the Second Bank of the United States but now houses the "People of Independence" exhibit. This includes 185 paintings of Colonial and Federal leaders, military officers, explorers and scientists, including many by Charles Willson Peale. The National Liberty Museum was intended as the highlight of the day for the kids. One of the attractions for us was the Dale Chihuly glassworks. (He did some glass installations at Floriade in 1999.) The museum 'was created to celebrate our nation's heritage of freedom and the wonderful diverse society it has produced'.

After lunch, we visited the Betsy Ross House. Betsy Ross is famous for claims that she sewed the first United States flag. Whether the story is true or not, today the story gets the tourists through a house that she may or may not have lived in! Our last visit for the day was to the Rodin Museum which houses the largest collection of his works outside Paris. While warm inside, it was so bitterly cold outside that we were again glad to get back to the hotel. Although our GPS let us down and steered me over the Benjamin Franklin Bridge overlooking our hotel, costing us about 20 minutes longer to get home and the ignominy of having to pay a $3 toll to get back over the river! Dinner at Dave & Busters just up the road from our hotel, although still used the courtesy bus to get there to avoid the cold.

Not quite as cold on Monday morning (it is all relative!) when we checked out of our hotel and drove to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I ensured that the kids were up on their history before we went there with YouTube obliging with a training montage of Rocky finishing with his famous run up the Museum's steps. Obligatory photos with the Rocky statue and the run up the steps followed! Some of the exhibitions we were interested in at the Museum were in another annexe and we didn't have time to do it justice. Ensured that Kieren saw their Arms and Armor collection which he went around with a big smile on his face and just kept saying 'awesome'! Some of the exhibits were even in the same colours as some of his knights and he was particularly impressed with some boy armour. They also did some drawings for the museum as part of their Martin Luther King Jr activities.

Drove to Intercourse in Lancaster County on Monday afternoon where we stayed at the Best Western and had very good and very cheap meals for both dinner and breakfast the next morning. With the season and cold, some of the shops we wanted to visit were closed but Donna did all the quilting related shops that afternoon.

On Tuesday morning we did similar shop visiting in Bird in Hand on the way to Lancaster. Last time we were up here the Lancaster Quilt and Textile Museum was being renovated so we stopped off to look at their range of Amish quilts and a current rug exhibition, while the kids played in the building's original bank safe. Were tempted to lock them in there but thought better of it ...

Forecast was for snow settling and ice storms so we were a bit apprehensive when light hail started falling and settling while we were in the Museum. However this melted by the time we left. The drive home was uneventful with just a few drops of rain. The forecast proved once again to be overly pessimistic, something that's becoming a bit of a common feature of the storm warnings here.

Malcolm