A Full Day of Philly

We are camped in south-central New Jersey, which is a great location for visiting sights on both sides of the state. We can be at the beach by driving 27 miles east. But we can also drive 37 miles west to visit the city known as the birthplace of our country. After exploring the beaches, we took a day for a road trip to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We have a full day of Philly planned!

We crossed into Pennsylvania when we crossed the Ben Franklin bridge. It's a good thing we bought that EZ pass, because it made this crossing cheaper (just $5) with its automatic payment transponder on our pickup windshield.

We read that Philadelphia is a walkable city, so we left the pickup in the parking garage next to the National Historic Park all day. Visitors have to make reservations to see the inside of the State House in Philadelphia. While those reservations can fill up weeks in advance, the national park service opens some additional slots at 5 p.m. the evening before. At 5 p.m. last night, we scored two reservations for one of the morning tours, so we headed to Independence Hall first.

After checking in with our reservations in hand and going through security, we were allowed inside the sacred town square that is ringed by some of the most important buildings in our country's history. We first toured Independence Hall at our designated tour time.

Once inside, a very articulate ranger explained that this was originally the State House of the colony of Pennsylvania. It housed all three branches of the colonial government, so the first room we toured was a court room. This is where the signers of the Declaration of Independence would have been tried for treason if this independence thing hadn't worked out. Their signatures on this document meant that England could sentence them to death for treason.

The second room is the Assembly Hall, where two great documents took shape. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed in this room. It was eleven years later that our Constitution was debated, and later signed here. It was the room where our founding fathers gathered to knit together a constitution that is now the oldest written constitution in the world.

The ranger pointed out the chair at the front of the room. This was the actual chair where George Washington sat during these proceedings.

After finishing the tour of Independence Hall, we got in line for the Congress Hall tour. By going through security earlier, we were also cleared to go through the other buildings that were nearby. That would include Congress Hall. After a very short stint in New York City, the temporary national capitol was moved to Philadelphia from 1790 to 1800. This building housed the U.S. Congress, and the first two presidents were inaugurated here.

Upstairs in Congress Hall is the more colorful Senate chambers. Since the national government moved out in 1800, this building has been used for different purposes. But it has been painstakingly restored to the way it looked in 1790.

Our next stop was the "Great Essentials Exhibit" in the West Wing building. It includes original printed 18th century documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution--not the signed copies, but ones from the original printing. It's hard to take a picture of documents, but we did take a picture of the ink stand. This is where the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence dipped their pens to "mutually pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor" by signing that document.

Our next stop was the Liberty Bell Center, just a block away. This was the bell that was once at the top of the State House, whose crack has made it famous. In the 1950s, each state received a replica of the Liberty Bell as part of a savings bond campaign. We've found many of those bells in our travels to state capitols all over the country.

A line forms to see and photograph the bell. We waited our turn to get the traditional Liberty Bell photo with Independence Hall shining through the window behind us.

In that same block, we found the President's House Site. That house has been gone for years, but there is an outline of the foundation where the first two presidents' families lived while they held office in Philadelphia. A few walls and windows have been reconstructed on their original site to give visitors a sense of size and placement of the country's first presidential house.

This entire section of Philadelphia is full of historical sites. Even when we ventured out of the Independence National Historic Park, we found buildings that dated back to the 1700s. For example,  this is the First Bank of the United States built in 1795, created by Alexander Hamilton.

The roads leading to these old buildings are still the brick or cobble stone streets. You could almost hear the clickity-clack of horse's hooves in these old streets.

We also stopped by Christ Church, which still has an active congregation with regular services. But they open their doors to visitors that would like to see where our country's forefathers worshipped in the 1700s. This tall building was hard to fit into a camera frame. It was the tallest building in the United States until 1810.

Visitors are welcome to enter quietly and walk into the sanctuary. Tours are also available for a fee, and the group at the front of the church was participating in one of those tours.

But with our paper guide, we could read about interesting parts of the church. For example, people paid rent on their pews, and were assigned spots in the sanctuary. The Presidential Pew was 56-58, so this was where George Washington and John Adams sat while they held the office of President. You can come to Christ Church and sit where George once sat.

Ben Franklin's family was the pew holder of #70--further towards the back, but still on the center aisle. 

Another popular historical spot in this corner of Philadelphia is the City Tavern. Built by the wealthy and influential members of the city in 1773, this was a brand new place for discussing the future of the country.

Denisa is sitting in a booth at the tavern where independence and freedom from England were surely discussed over a pint of ale.

All the discussions and signing of documents here in Philadelphia were just the first steps in the freedom we enjoy. After the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a long American Revolutionary War took place with some battles close to here. In fact, the memorial in Washington Square points out that thousands of soldiers were buried in unmarked graves in this square. This is the tomb of the unknown soldier of the American Revolution with its statement, "Freedom is a light for which many men have died in darkness." It's a somber reminder that freedom is not free.

In all our historical wanderings of the streets of Philadelphia, we walked all the way to the shores of the Delaware River. That gave us another view of the Ben Franklin bridge that we crossed on our way into town. That's Camden, New Jersey on the other side of the river.

All this walking can make a tourist hungry. What's for lunch today? A Philly cheese steak sandwich of course! We read about several famous places to partake of this city's most famous lunch item, but we settled on the place recommended by a ranger at the historical site. It was a great lunch!

After a fascinating morning filled with our nation's early history, we then wandered through some of Philadelphia's other sites. Denisa had a list of recommended places to see, and we walked to all of them. We started at City Hall. That seemed like an unlikely tourist stop, until we saw the huge building that is standing over Mark's shoulder. There's no way to get far enough away to fit the entire building into a single photo!

This huge maze of city hall buildings and towers took almost thirty years to build, and it is the center piece of Philadelphia.

Out front, it hosts an ice rink in the winter, and a colorful skating rink in the summer.

City Hall was built in 1901. In the century since, tall sky scrapers have risen around it.

We learned in school that Philadelphia is the "city of brotherly love." We found signs of love in downtown Philly today.

For those speaking Spanish, we also found signs of Amor in downtown Philadelphia.

We did all the classic Philly things. We thought by "The Thinker" in front of the Rodin Art Gallery.

Mark also mimicked the classic Rocky pose in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

We both remember the scenes from the Rocky movie where Sylvester Stallone ran up the stairs here in preparation for the big fight. 

We had to share the top of the steps with the rest of the tourists taking the same pictures.

From that top step, you can stand in Rocky's foot-steps and see the view of the Philadelphia skyline that he saw in the movies.

The Art Museum was our furthest point from the pickup, and so it was time to turn around. But we made a stop by the entrance to China Town . . .

and also the Reading Terminal Market. Built in 1892, it's one of the nation's oldest and largest public markets. There are 83 vendors under one roof, and ten of those have been doing  business here since it opened. 

Our legs are tired and we are really looking forward to the Amish bakery goods that we have read about in this market. But in a strange strike of bad luck, the electricity was out in the corner of the market where Yoder's bakery does business. It was very unusual for them to be closed this afternoon. It was interesting that the Amish should have been the best at dealing with no electricity, but Mark was deeply disappointed that we wouldn't have any sticky buns today. The rest of the market was lit up with electricity and neon signs, and we sat and rested while enjoying a fruit smoothie and cookie from a different bakery.

We walked by more of Philadelphia's street artwork, with the City Hall in the background.

By the time we got back to the pickup, we had walked 11 miles, and we were hustling to try to beat rush hour traffic out of the city. We had been here for seven hours, enjoying the historical and more modern sights of Philadelphia. We have checked off all the sights on Denisa's long list of things to see and do, and we loved our Full Day of Philly!