Saturday, October 11, 2008 – Day 2 – Philadelphia
We slept in this morning until 7:30 and slowly got ready for our first full day in Philadelphia. We had breakfast in the hotel restaurant which was very good – a breakfast buffet with cereal, dried fruit, different types of milk (including fat free!), the traditional breakfast fare (eggs, sausage, bacon, pancakes, etc), fruit, and pastries. The selection was very good and I was particularly happy to see that they offered boxes of Kashi Heart Healthy cereal. We ate our leisurely breakfast and Milca came by to give us an update and have us fill out 2 more menus for later meals. We were also quizzed about the theme for the day (Let Freedom Ring) and the word of the day (Liberty).
We met in the lobby of the hotel at 8:45 excited to be taking our first official tour on this trip but before we boarded, Milca and Maria shared their “surprise” with the Junior Adventurers. The photos that they had taken the night before had been printed out and put into special ABD books with blank pages for the kids to take notes in. There were also places to put stamps from each place that we visited. It was very cool for the kids to receive their personalized books.
We were given bottles of water and boarded our trolley meeting our tour guide, Colonial Kay who was dressed in period clothing with a bright pink parasol. Through the day, we had no trouble finding Kay and her parasol.
The trolley was not quite big enough to accommodate all 40 of us – there were at least 2 Adventurers who had to stand in the trolley..
The kids made a beeline for the back of the trolley. Kay was very entertaining and knowledgeable pointing out a few sites as we made our way downtown. Our first stop was Elfreth's Alley – the oldest continuously inhabited street in the US. The trolley let us off so we could walk down the alley. Kay pointed out some interesting things including the boot scrapers next to some of the residences as well as the “spy” mirrors – these were situated on the 2nd floor so that a person could peek out the window at the mirror and could see who was at the front door as well as who was up and down the alley.
We walked at a leisurely pace to the house of Betsy Ross which wasn’t opened yet. Kay told us some history about Betsy Ross, her 3 husbands and 3 sets of children. Betsy and her husband were buried in the garden next to her house.
We re-boarded the trolley and headed to our next stop, Constitution Center. It was about 10 am and we had about an hour to spend in the center – we were to meet at 11 am in front. Kay pointed out the exhibit on the front lawn – signs that were similar to a Snellen eye chart with a large word on top and lines with gradually smaller words further down. There was one sign per US president and the word at the top was the word that had been used the most by the president during their inaugural speech. It was a very interesting exhibit and we made a mental note to take a closer look at it after we visited the center.
We took a quick bathroom break after receiving our admission bracelets (our admission had already been arranged by our Guides), then got in line for the next showing of Freedom Rising. We were shown into a circular theater and watched a combination of live narration, a light show, and projected images as the story of the Constitution was told. The show was very good and poignant. There was an elevator in the theater that brought people up to be seated at the top as everyone exited from the top of the theater into the exhibition hall. We wandered the exhibition hall for a while looking at the many interesting displays which combined signs, artifacts, video monitors, and interactive displays about every conceivable thing the Constitution represented. We were not allowed to take any pictures while in the show or exhibit hall. At around 10:45, we left the exhibition hall and headed downstairs for another bathroom break and a quick peek in the gift shop where I picked up a Constitution Center magnet for our collection. Amina also bought a copy of the Constitution.
We visited the outside exhibit called “Hindsight is Always 20/20” for a short while and marveled at what an interesting experiment was being displayed. Each president had, of course, their own agenda coming into their presidency but to see the most commonly used words in the inaugural speech and remembering the issues at that time was particularly striking. Bush Junior’s most frequently used words were terror and Al Qaida. I think this exhibit as well as the Freedom Rising show were the highlight of the day for me.
From the Constitution Center, we walked down and across the street to Christ Church Burial Ground where Benjamin Franklin was buried. Our Guides had handed out pennies to each of us as we gathered outside of the Constitution Center so that we could place a penny on Ben Franklin’s grave for good luck.
We walked past the Free Quaker meeting place peeking into the windows as we went by then crossed the street again and walked to the Liberty Bell center.
Our bags were checked again as we entered and we bypassed the exhibit and went straight to the Liberty Bell where we went to the backside of the bell and our Guides took pictures of each family in front of the bell with both their camera and ours.
There was a bit of a wait to take all of these pictures then we headed out the back door and walked to Independence Hall. Kay pointed out famous sites and shared history with us and we detoured into an adjacent building to see the “Great Essentials” – copies of the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and Constitution were housed here. We then got in line for the noon tour of Independence Hall.
We were led into a room with chairs where a Park Service Interpreter explained about our tour. We were then taken into Independence Hall and listened to the history of the Hall and learned about the process of writing the Declaration of Independence. Although the Declaration was written on July 4th, 1776, it was not actually read publicly until July 8th and an “official” copy was not printed/signed until August of 1776.
After our Independence Hall tour, our Guides had yet another surprise planned for us. Each family signed their very own copy of the Declaration which we were allowed to keep along with a patriotic pen. We snapped pictures of each other as we signed our copy.
The Junior Adventurers were then gathered on the steps by Independence Hall and we snapped a few pictures of them.
Kay then gave out our pins for the day: Pluto with the Liberty Bell with our theme phrase. We said goodbye to Kay and were then taken to the Bourse for lunch on our own.
The Bourse was a building with different places to eat and a few shops – seating was plentiful. We found the bathrooms first then I shared an East Coast Cobb salad with Amina and some sushi with Seth and Rhys.
After lunch, we did a little shopping finding a few more nice magnets for our collection. Rhys got a Philadelphia magnet clip while Amina got a blue Philadelphia bear to keep Chicago company. They also each spent their own money to buy a toy car (Rhys) and earrings (Amina). We then went downstairs to meet up with our fellow Adventurers at 2 pm to do our scheduled scavenger hunt. The family of grandparents and their 4 grandkids skipped the scavenger hunt and opted to go to the Mint instead but Milca informed us that the Mint was only open with limited hours during the week and was closed on weekends. We would have liked to have seen the Mint as well but the timing didn’t allow. Just about everyone else on our tour attended the scavenger hunt.
We walked a short distance to the Independence Living History Center and sat outside to wait for our scavenger hunt guide.
I had read on the DIS boards that the scavenger hunt was not to be missed but had no idea what to expect. The kids kept themselves busy by running round and round on the benches in front of the Center. Milca soon came out of the Center with large trifold Colonial hats that we were to wear to participate in our scavenger hunt.
We waited for about ½ an hour outside the Center when our scavenger hunt guide finally joined us.
We crossed the street to the park and soon saw a man running towards us shouting “Freedom!”. He ran up the pathway and came back around jumping the wall and pretending to fall down which really made the kids giggle and warm up to him. He introduced himself as Phinneas Bell and he was looking for his dog, Freedom, that he described as a white dog “this big, well, actually, only this big” as he motioned with his hands. Apparently, Freedom had run off with his ruck sack which contained a quill pen from Benjamin Franklin, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, and some parchment paper from Thomas Jefferson. He enlisted the children to help find his missing things and dog which the children were extremely excited to do.
Phinneas pointed out the woman on the bridge and recommended asking her to see if she had seen Freedom run by. The children took off running towards the woman on the bridge while the adults walked slowly across the park with one parent reassuring everyone that “the children are on top of it – they’ll take care of it”. When we reached the bridge, the woman had a frog puppet and interacted cleverly with the children.
Eventually, the woman suggested that the children look around for items that may have been dropped in the bushes. Phinneas did his best to steer the children away from the muddy area under the bridge. With a little help, the children found the quill pen in a bush. The woman with the frog then pointed out that she had seen Freedom run towards the garden and the children took off like a shot running to the garden before Phinneas even had a chance to explain further. The parents chuckled and walked leisurely over to the garden.
In the garden, a woman with a puppet goose introduced herself as a cook from the City Tavern.
She pulled out a piece of parchment paper to wipe the goose’s nose and Phinneas recognized it as one of his missing pieces of parchment paper. When asked where she found it, she pointed towards the other end of the garden. Again, the children raced over and began searching for the rest of the pieces of parchment paper. One by one, the children found the pieces and at this point, we took a break and were offered water and snacks (fruit snacks). We resumed our scavenger hunt and found Ben Franklin sitting on a bench.
His quill pen was returned and he instructed Phinneas to return the Declaration to the Colonel. Phinneas then spotted his old school teacher in the park and told the children that he was supposed to have a reading lesson that morning but that he had skipped it. The old school teacher had a mouse puppet that she interpreted for and with their help, Phinneas was able to read the parchment paper.
She also suggested that Freedom was near the pine trees and the children ran off looking for him. They eventually found Freedom and celebrated but we still had to get the Declaration to the Colonel so that it could be publicly read that afternoon. We walked a bit further and the children instantly found the soldier who was the funniest actor of all.
We were all awarded medals (gold star stickers) at the conclusion of our guided scavenger hunt and the actors stopped to pose for pictures with us.
We all felt that the scavenger hunt was very cleverly run and enjoyed it a great deal. The actors posed for pictures afterwards. After final instructions were given for baggage pick up in the morning (at 7:30 am) and meeting for our trip to DC, we headed off.
The rest of our day was free. We had stopped by concierge in the morning to make reservations for dinner at the Old Philadelphia Bookbinders – a seafood restaurant, at 6:30 pm. It was about 4 pm when we finished with the scavenger hunt and split from the rest of the group. Ron and Deb returned to the hotel with a few other people and Milca. We headed back to Carpenter’s Hall, then visited the Military museum at New Hall. We walked down the street and stopped by the 2nd National Bank where we saw a portrait exhibit. The kids really wanted to take a carriage ride so we hired a woman with her horse, Rex, to take us on a 30 minute (“medium”) tour for $40. Along the way to the carriage ride, I was stopped numerous times by people asking where we had gotten our Colonial hats.
After our carriage ride, we walked towards the Independence Visitor center but the main doors had just been closed so we walked on back to the Constitution Center.
It was about 5:15 and the Center was scheduled to close at 6 pm. We went back upstairs to the exhibit hall then over to the Signer’s Hall that we had missed before snapping pictures with cast metal life-sized replicas of every person who signed the Declaration. We also signed the copy of the Declaration in Signer’s Hall.
We made our way back downstairs to the gift shop and then headed back to the hotel arriving at just past 6 pm. We dumped some stuff in our room and picked up Ron and Deb for our dinner reservation at Bookbinders which was just across the street from the City Tavern that we ate dinner at the night before.
We started with the Seafood Sampler for 4 which was reminiscent of the seafood sampler we had with the kids when we were in San Diego over Spring Break: clams, mussels, oysters, lump crab meat, lobster, and “oyster shooters”.
We also tried the calamari which was very good. I ordered the striped sea bass with basil and balsamic vinegar but was very disappointed at how dry the fish was, it was obviously overcooked – enough that I even sent it back to the kitchen. Not even 5 minutes later, I received another sea bass which was much better and moist. I also tried Seth’s scallops which were just a teensy bit overcooked and Rhys’ filet which was delicious. The best part of dinner, though, was Ron’s butternut squash which tasted like butter and sugar. For dessert, Amina, Deb, and I shared the coconut cake which was HUGE and delicious.
Seth’s warm brownie a la mode was also huge. We walked back to the hotel at about 8:15 and the kids quickly put on their swimsuits and we headed for the pool to meet up with some of the other Junior Adventurers that the kids had made friends with. The adults gathered at a table and chatted while I downloaded my pictures and Amina’s pictures. At 9:30, I got the kids out of the pool, got them into bed, and did some packing and preparing for our check-out in the morning.
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