East Trip: Philadelphia

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first thing we did when we arrived in Philadelphia, was to visit the gift shop of course!  We did this at almost every stop we made…gift shop first, then off to see the sights.  Not sure why, but it kind of happened that way!  Here Bekah is holding our Christmas ornament…every year we buy an ornament that has something to do with that year, so we thought it would be perfect to get an ornament that had something to do with our big trip.

 

 

We got kind of hungry, since it was lunchtime, and began scouting out our options.  Daddy found this little roadside stand and we all got hot dogs…and Daddy bought one Philly cheesesteak for us all to try.  It was our first time ever having one, and it was the best of any we’ve had since!  Of course, it only makes sense that Philadelphia makes the best Philly cheesesteaks 😉

 

 

 

We kept the poor vendor quite busy (he was rich by the time we went through, lol!) 😀

 

Then we all sat on the wall along the sidewalk…

 

…and ate our Philly hot dogs 😀

 

 

{THE Philly Cheesesteak}

 

 

After lunch, we headed over to Independence hall.  Unfortunately, they were working on it, so we didn’t get very picturesque photos of it 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

We got our free tickets and waited in line…

 

 

 

{One of the tickets}

 

{waiting some more}

 

{and some more!}

 

Once we were inside, our guide showed us the courtroom part of the building.  She also told us the story of how a seal like this of King George’s used to hang on the wall (see the next picture).   The patriots took it down, drug it through the mud through the streets, and burned it.  Of course that did not make the king very happy with them as it was as bad as treason.

 

 

Here you see the Pennsylvania State seal.  This is where King George’s seal used to hang.  The artist had never seen a bald eagle, so the eagle he drew was, well…

 

…quite bald!  That’s the eagle in the center 😀

 

 

The architecture was beautiful…

 

 

{going into the Assembly Room}

 

A picture of our founding fathers in the assembly room

 

 

{an old desk}

 

 

Inside the assembly room, our guide told us about what went on here…first the signing of the Declaration of Independence, then the shaping of our Constitution.  It was just amazing to think that George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and so many more of our founding fathers were standing here in this room!

 

George Washington’s ‘Rising Sun’ chair.  Not all the furniture was ‘original’, but this is the exact chair George Washington sat in 😀

 

 

Our guide, showing us a copy of the Constitution

 

 

Aren’t all the quills, candles and old books just lovely?!!

 

 

Unfortunately (but understandably) we were not allowed in around the desks…they had a ‘railing’ for us to stand behind.

 

When our founding fathers gathered here to sign the Declaration of Independence,  it was dark outside, the doors were locked,  the windows were boarded, and guards stood around the building…it was a secretive meeting.  John Hancock was the first to sign his name 🙂

 

More beautiful architecture (:  We weren’t allowed to go up the steps, either…

 

 

 

On our way out the door…

 

{The clock on the outside}

 

 

 

 

 

After we came out of Independence Hall, one of us thought we had seen a sign that said that this brick house was the house of one of the founding fathers…well, it may have been, but now it is a bank, so we can only imagine what the tellers thought when a family of eleven walked through their revolving door, looked around (and looked lost), and then went back out the revolving door 😀  Oh well…it was a fancy bank, and fun to see 😉

 

 

{walking down the streets of Philadelphia}

 

 

There were horse-drawn carriages you could ride…we walked by a bunch of them lined up by the sidewalk when we went to see the Liberty Bell 🙂

 

 

It was interesting going through security again as we entered the building that housed the Liberty Bell…they looked inside of all of our bags.  Do you wonder if they ever laugh about what they see inside of people’s bags?!  Extra diapers, straw wrappers we’ve saved to put into our visual journals, etc, etc.  They’re probably used to all kinds of strange things 😉

 

 

We weren’t supposed to touch the actual Bell, but they had this casting from the actual Bell that we could touch.  That was neat!

 

{The Liberty Bell}

 

 

We could hardly believe we were actually seeing the real thing! Our trip was full of things like this…sometimes it was hard to process!  We aren’t complaining however, we very much enjoyed being overwhelmed in this way 😉

 

The Bell was considerably smaller than some of us originally thought…in pictures it fills up the whole photo and it looks so…big!   Right before we took this picture there were people swarming all around it.  We weren’t sure how we were going to get a family picture in, but finally just went for it 😀  All of the sudden everybody cleared out, someone offered to take our picture so that everybody could be in it, and tourists were taking pictures of us. That was interesting 😀  But it was nice that we were able to get a family picture by the Bell 😀

 

 

These are some neat old buildings in Philadelphia…we took this picture from the parking garage we were parked in 🙂

 

 

We didn’t have time (or they were closed) to actually go inside Betsy Ross’ house, but we did get to see the outside…

 

The front of her house…

 

 

As we traveled to some cousins’ house who lived in Pennsylvania, we got stuck in traffic on the bridge…

 

This was a building we saw from the bridge…isn’t the flag painting amazing?!

 

Being stuck on the bridge gave us plenty of time to take pictures of it…

 

 

…and also of the train.  We were a little jealous of the people riding the train as they whizzed by us 😀  Facinated, too, because most trains in our area carry coal, semi trailers, cars, grain, etc…but rarely people 😀

 

 

 

 

 

Ahhhh!   Cornfields!  You never realize how much you like them until you’ve been in a city all day 😀  The city is amazing, but there’s just no place like home 😉

 

Tomorrow we’ll tell you about our day in Gettysburg 😀

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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