March 28th - 31th
This year for our Mother-daughter weekend, we headed north to Philadelphia. Friday afternoon we headed out and met up in Fredericksburg. It was great to drive together the rest of the drive. The drive up was pretty uneventful. Just a quick stop at
El Diablo, in Wilmington, Delaware.
We made it to our
hotel in downtown Philly around 9pm and were pleasantly surprised to learn that my Starwood Points got us free drinks at the hotel bar. So before calling it a night, we hung out downstairs watching a few basketball games.
The real fun started on Saturday morning! As we walked out of our hotel in the rain, we quickly made it to
Reading Terminal Market for breakfast. I love the market and we spent quite a bit of time just wandering around seeing all of our options. We finally settled on a place that looked very popular and we knew was going to be closed on Sunday & Monday, so we decided we had to check it out today. So we grabbed some breakfast from
Dutch Eating Place.
After breakfast, we were off to the
Visitor Center to check out all the fun stuff to do in Philadelphia. Once we were done checking out all the brochures and asked the volunteers all the questions we could thing of, we settled on getting the
Philadelphia Pass. We quickly sat down and planned out all the places we wanted to tackle, booked out bus trip and were set up for a rainy morning
walking tour lead by none other then Benjamin Franklin himself!
We learned so much on the tour! Things like:
- People throw pennies on Benjamin Franklin's grave because he is the one that is known for saying "A penny saved is a penny earned." They collect over $4,000 every year from those pennies!
- Ben Franklin was a printer and by the age of 42 he retired because "he had enough money". While he was a printer, he also founded a library, organized the first fire company, appointed the first postmaster of Philadelphia and established the first American magazine. In retirement, he founded a hospital, started a college, figured out electricity, and of course, got involved in politics and signed a bunch of stuff.
- We visited the
first post office and learned that because Ben Franklin started it, he got to mail all his stuff for free. So if you look at the signature, it says, "B. Free Franklin". How cool is that! This is a very popular post office. If you have you letters mailed from this post office, it is stamped with "B. Free Franklin" so many people bring wedding invitations, graduation announcements and Christmas cards here every year to get mailed out with that post mark.
- B Franklin's family made the decision many, many years ago to tear down his home, now a days they have created a "ghost model" of there his home use to be. We were bummed it wasn't still standing but it was neat to see they had still kept the area "historical" and even turned it into a
museum.
Not only did we learn a TON about Ben Franklin, we also learned about
Elfreth Alley, architecture of both the buildings and the city itself, banking, and of course, Independence Hall (but more on that one later).
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| Elfreth's Alley |
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| The Second Bank of The United States (1824-1836) |
After almost two hours walking in the rain with Ben Franklin, it was time to head to something a little dryer. So we took advantage of the
tour bus/trolley.
Because of the weather, we were not able to see much out the windows but our guide gave us lots of information while we enjoyed the seats and much dryer weather. But we didn't last long before our next stop was up:
Eastern State Penitentiary.
Oh my goodness, this place was. . . creepy, cold but so much fun!! Most of this was a self guided tour but it was so interesting. If you are ever in Philadelphia this is a MUST!!
I think the next time, we will need to do a night tour of this place. It was eerie in the day, I can't imagine how freaky it would be at night.
But it was completely fascinating to learn about this prison, its inmates and what it was like to live there. I think the weirdest/creepiest thing about this place is how much colder it was inside then any where else we had been all day. Just made the experience that much scarier.
After our tour at the prison, it was time to hop back on the bus and see what other adventures we could find. Unfortunately, it was to cold and rainy to run the
Rocky steps so we just got a picture with the statue in the Visitor Center, that counts, right?
Once we made the loop around the city on our trolley/bus, we were hungry and headed back to the Reading Terminal Market where we got something warm to drink and a few pretzels. We sat and listened to some live music while we planned our evening.
We decided to jump into the car and head towards the
UPENN campus to find dinner there. We found a place that sounded great for dinner called
City Tap House.
This place was crazy!! It was March Madness weekend, they had live music and a fundraiser complete with a silent auction. It was wall to wall people but we didn't let that stop us. We put our name on the list, grabbed a drink and enjoyed the music, people watching and being dry. After about an hour and a half, we got a table. It was a lot of fun and very memorable.
Sunday morning, we started back at our favorite place, the Reading Terminal Market, for breakfast. This time we hit up the crepe place,
Profi's Creperie. You gotta love it when you get a fruit crepe and you are surprised by the cheesecake that is in there for breakfast! What a great way to start the morning.
There was more rain again today but we weren't going to let that slow us down at all. So after we got our fill for the morning at the market, we headed to
Betsy Ross House.
We really enjoyed this self guided audio tour but I think we both left with more questions then answers after the tour was over. We definitely learned lots about Betsy Ross and my favorite thing I learned was:
- Allegedly, when George Washington asked Betsy Ross to make this flag, he wanted six point stars but Betsy Ross knew how difficult cutting out six point stars were be so instead she used a five point star because you can make them with just
one snip of the scissors.
After the tour at Betsy Ross House, we headed over to our tour at
Independence Hall.
Once we got through security, we had some time to be silly and try to stay dry and warm. Thankfully, they were nice enough to let us in to the next tour so we didn't have to wait an extra 30 minutes in the rain.
We began our tour with our guide explaining where we were heading and what all of the rooms were that we were going to see. So much information and so little room to keep it all stored in my head.
It was a very well done tour and our guide knew a lot of information. It was really neat to be able to see that actual rooms that all of these things happened. One of the coolest things about this tour, was the entire UCF Softball team was on the same tour with us. Since we just had a friend get a job at UCF in the athletic department, I made sure I got picture with the team (and the little Hokie Bird) to send to him.
When we finished at Independence Hall, we made our way right back to our favorite place in Philly, the market. We had decided that for dinner tonight we want to just get fruits, cheeses and bread and have a relaxing evening. So we had to grab dinner before the market closed. Then we headed back to the hotel to pick up the car. It isn't a trip to Philly without heading over to
Pat &
Geno's for a cheesesteak.
Clearly this is wasted on me since I don't eat it but mom had to try it. Since two cheesesteaks was just way too much, we picked Pat's. I was actually shocked to see how short of a line it was and mom didn't love it but we had a great time on the adventure out there. It allowed us to see so much more of the city even if it was only 2 miles from where we were staying.
After our cheesesteak stop, we went and explored a different part of the city. I had found a tea shop,
Premium Steap, that I wanted to check out and since it wasn't walkable from our hotel, this seemed like the perfect time to go check it out. It was cute shopping area around the tea shop so we did a little window shopping as we walked around in the rain.
The tea shop wasn't entirely what I had expected. They had TONS of different loose tea and accessories but no little café for us to try any tea or just sit and have a warm drink. So after check out all kinds of stuff in the store I walked away with lots of new tea and new accessories. My mom was so sweet, she even got me an adorable mug that didn't make my cut of purchases.
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| How cute is that!! |
We decided that finding a little coffee shop would be a great way to spend the early evening and the guy working at the tea shop told us about,
Elixr Coffee.
It was such a cute little coffee shop and we had a great time just hanging out and people watching. But before long it was starting to get late and we had a long day ahead of us the next day so we decided to head back to our hotel for our cheese, bread and fruit dinner that awaited us in our room and called it a night.
Monday morning we weren't quite ready to head home immediately. So we got up and out first thing so we could do the tour of the
US Mint before we headed home. The Mint in Philadelphia only makes coins and we learned a ton about how they are made and were even able to watch some of it in progress. Unfortunately, you couldn't take pictures inside but some of the highlights were the stain glass in the lobby area and the stuffed eagle they had that they used for the design on the coins. I was so glad we made the stop.
But before we headed back to the car to hit the road, it wouldn't be a day in Philly for us without a trip to the market one last time. We both grabbed goodies for the breakfast and snacks for the road before hopping in the car for the drive back.
We had so, so much fun in Philadelphia and I am so incredible thankful that we have had the opportunity to take these Mother-Daughter trips each year. Mom, thank you so much! You are the best. But next year, lets head south.
