What a fun day!! Here’s a map to help get you orientiered.
Kim is at the hotel gym at the moment but from all the walking we did, I wonder where she has the energy! It wasn’t really a long hard day, just a fun day seeing some neat Philly stuff without the crowds.
The day started around 9am with a slow start by the parental units after Sabrina got up and drew us some Ritz Carlton drawings. It’s nice being woken up to the image of a lion. It soon began to rain so we put on our rain gear that has thus far gone unused due to the very warm weather on the East Coast. Our first stop on the subway we decided would be 2nd street and we’d checkout the Seaport Museum. This place is really cool and you get a $1 AAA discount (it never hurts to ask and today it saved us $3!). At first we thought the museum was just kinda empty but we later found it was TOTALLY empty. Except for the boat workers and some contractors putting in new flooring, we had the place completely to ourselves. And I mean completely; it was incredible!
Lucky for us the penny squisher was right by the coat room that also has lockers (25 cents). We’ve been collecting squished pennies for a while and the linked site above is quite handy. Anyway, the museum is empty so the three of us can try out all the cool boat stuff at our own pace. There are plenty of hands on experiments that help kids (and adults) learn about ballast, wind, how boats are built, etc… It is all really well done and useful and not too overloading. They have a whole room where people working for the museum are building actual wooden boats. One gentleman chatted with us for a bit, noting that the two main boats being built now were commissioned by citizens and a third one was being built by volunteers who just wanted to learn the craft. It was very cool, my Dad would surely like it a lot.
We skipped the upstairs for now and went straight out to the World War II submarine Becuna and historic Cruiser Olympia. This was yet another ultimate tour…..we had both ships entirely to ourselves. Well, actually, there was someone doing some painting on the Olympia but other than that…
I was a giddy school kid in the sub. We had all the time in the world to just check out all
the STUFF!! And there’s a lot of stuff on a sub, really. You can see from the pictures how intricate it could be to manage such a ship while at sea. Kim could tell I was like a kid in a candy shop as I would point out things to Sabrina and even at one point went running back to the Control Room because I missed looking up into the conning tower. I highly suggest touring these boats on a rainy, winter Friday if you are in the area. Sabrina and Kim both thought the sub was cool. Kim hadn’t been on the boat since childhood and very much enjoyed it without crowds. I liked this sub better than the Hornet in San Francisco.
After the boats we walked up past the Korean War Memorial (very well done and quite artful) and on toward Independence National Historic Park. We stopped, we gazed, we looked like tourists and enjoyed it all in a fairly uncrowded atmosphere. By now the rain was gone and the skies were getting a bit blue here and 
there. Independence Hall has a LOT of fence around it but we chose not to take the tour. Liberty Bell was in a different location than Kim remembered it, housed in a nice newer building. Only a quick bag check at the door and entrance is free. We knew there was another penny squisher at the National Constitution Center (Sabrina already has the one from the Independence Information Center) and headed in that direction planning to hit the US Mint and then the Information center for some stamps for National Park Passport stamp book. The squishers (2!) were easy to get to but we figured the NCC was best for Sabrina when she’s a little older. The Mint closed at 3pm and is something that would have been good to look up before hand (which Kim informs me she said we should do the night before). The Park also had a Junior Ranger program which would have been good to ask about to get Sabrina another badge like the one from the Statue of Liberty.
After some shopping for books for Sabrina we headed to City Tavern for dinner. It’s a neat little place that is a recreation of 
the original on that location that used to be the haunt of our Founding Fathers. Which reminds me, we also saw Benjamin Franklin’s tomb before heading there. Not having reservations and wearing not the fanciest of clothes put us in the basement for dinning but we were rewarded with live harp music just outside our room and the room, once again, all to ourselves.
It was a very magical day with a relaxed pace that suited us all. No one whined (well, maybe just once) and we saw a lot of history.
