Day 1

Independence Hall
see all photos »

May 25th Day 1

We awoke bright and early 7:00am (4:00am Tucson Time)   and found ourselves at The Reading by 8:00 to grab breakfast.  We were advised the Amish corner offered good breakfast. We found over priced eggs and sausage, and an unfriendly cashier who shorted us a dollar in change, but we left full and a little wiser.  Next we took a 15 minute walk down to Independence Visitor Center.  We reserve our free tickets for Independence Hall for later in the day, and make our way to the "Ducks".  It ended up being only our family and one other person on the tour.(Later we saw the Ducks brimming  with fellow tourists).  This ended up being yje kids favorite part of the day.  The tour  was in a refurbished WWII land and water vehicle.  We drifted down the Delaware and bounced along the Danish Block (not cobble stone) streets of the Historical District.  So much fun!

THE ROOM
see all photos »

After the tour we vetured to the Betsy Ross House.  We passed on the tour feeling it was a little pricey for what it was.  And enjoyed the displays they had in the gift shop and enjoyed our time in the court yard.

The kids and I took a small break under a tree in front of Independence Hall, while Jared ran down to CVS to buy more batteries for our camera.  We had bought our son a bag of soldiers which he was busily setting up unaware of the admiring and curious eyes watching him from the group of  tourists from Taiwan we were sharing the shade with.  An older man sits down next to him as his wife gets ready to take a picture. Our son tries to politely get out their way to only realize he is the one they want to take a picture with.  He glances over to me questioning the nature of this, and I reassure him everything is fine.  He then smiles and poses for the picture then continues preparing his patriots for battle.  We talk with one of the tourists for a bit until their group moves on, shortly after Jared arrives with the batteries; onto  Independence Hall.

Franklin Bridge to New Jersey
see all photos »

We wait about a half hour for our timed tour to begin.  We were in the company of two very large middle school groups.  We are prodded into a room that has several rows of chairs facing each other.  We take our seats, and listen to the Ranger explain the neccesity of good behavior, and what we can expect to learn about on this tour.  He then adds that no food, drink or gum is allowed in the building and those who have gum need to deposit it into the waste basket.  At this moment our son hops up from his seat trots across the room,(again totally unaware of his audience), spits his gum out and returns to his seat.  The Ranger promptly comments on what an example this boy is and offers him a round of applause.  Feeling quite like a superstar Noah smiles and gives me a side glance-  as if to say "Has the whole world gone mad".  We ventured into a court room, then onto the famed room where our Founding Fathers argued, fought and compromised there way to the signing of the Declaration of Independence and eight years later the Constitution.  I really wanted some time to just take in our surroundings and try and place myself back in time- a little hard to do in the middle of 50 or more 13 year olds...  So we lingered... and lost our group, which ended up not being such a bad thing.

We then made our way to the Constitution Center.  Not the best place to take young children, it was interesting and offered pretty good interactive displays on the ever amended Constitution of the United States.  The kids kept busy playing with the "who has the right to vote" computers along the way.

We walked back to our Hotel and to the Reading where we sampled Oprah's favorite macaroni and cheese from Delilahs,(thumbs up), and took dessert back to our temporary home).

Places visited on day one

Independence visitor center, Liberty Bell, Betsy Ross House, Independence Hall, Duck tour, The Constitution Center,Reading Terminal Market