April 23, 2011

Dan and I spent the weekend visiting my family near Philadelphia and decided to take a day to explore this most historic city. It was still early in the season, but we had beautiful weather and some of the flowers were blooming. My aunt and uncle made some suggestions, to which Dan and I added our own meanderings. Here’s what we saw.

China Town

Corn Exchange National Bank

Cat outside of Betsy Ross’s house

Old church

I have a bible similar to this one at home

The weather wasn’t perfect, with a bit of a drizzle near lunch time. We took advantage of this and went in to the City Tavern to have lunch

If you see this plaza from above, the white lines are the streets of old Philly

Lunch at the City Tavern

War Memorial

Well-worn stair treads

Philly homes

We were being watched

Another memorial

Independence Hall, under renovation

We eventually left the historic center of town and made our way into the more modern city center. There were still some older buildings, but they were surrounded by some much larger and sleeker structures.

One of the 3,000 murals found throughout the city

Another mural

Before we hopped back on the train to my Uncle’s house we took a moment to explore the Reading Terminal Market. Lots of good food options that were very tempting!

Before we left Pennsylvania we stopped at Valley Forge State Park. The weather was beautiful and we took a nice long walk around the park.