The Johnsons

PART III: PHILADELPHIA

On our way home from Boston we stopped in Philadelphia. It worked out really well because we drove for a few hours Monday night and stopped at a Ramada Inn a few miles outside of the city. We usually like Ramada Inns and have had good experiences with them (though we aren't necessarily partial to that particular chain), but this hotel was the dumpiest hotel I had ever stayed in. It was really nice in the lobby area, but the rest of it needed some major work (to their credit, they are doing renovations). We were too tired and hungry to go find somewhere else, so we stayed and actually had a pretty good night. In the morning when we went to get our "complimentary continental breakfast", Joel and I each poured ourselves a glass of orange juice only to discover that it was so fermented it was starting to get its own carbonation. Needless to say, we kind of lost our appetite for the rest of breakfast after that (who knew what else was wrong?), but Everett and I found some muffins that were pretty good.

Now, onto what I was actually going to talk about. We didn't take too many pictures in Philadelphia, and we actually didn't see as much as we would have liked (I wanted to see the Franklin Institute and Joel would have liked to see inside Independence Hall), but it was nice to be there, just the same. Here are some pictures and highlights of the trip:

The Liberty bell actually weighs over a ton: 2080 pounds to be exact (and yes, this is the actual bell). That is heavy!

We obviously weren't ready for this picture, but this just proves we were there.

Here is Independence Hall. For you movie buffs, this is where Nicholas Cage finds Ben Franklin's special glasses in the movie National Treasure. We weren't able to get the whole clock tower in the shot, but that is where the Independence Bell used to hang. Nicholas Cage finds the glasses in one of the brick archways along the top of the roof. I wonder if the people at Indepence Hall have had to beef up security around those access points after the movie came out.

We went to a square in the city where unidentified soldiers were buried in thousands of unmarked graves. It was a neat area. Everett loved the excuse to run around.

Everett was mad when we made him get back in the stroller and leave the square. He had a lot of fun. There are quite a few of these in the old part of the city. I enjoyed seeing them, and it makes me wish more cities had these.

This is Betsy Ross's house (if you can tell by the blue sign in the picture). We weren't able to go through, but it was fun to see it.