David and Vogel at lunch at Solaris, a yummy restaurant right in Vogel's neighborhood.
After lunch, we headed to downtown Philly, specifically towards Independence Hall.
Independence Hall.
A really great shot of Vogel and David in front of Independence Hall. We didn't actually get to go in since they'd already given out all the tickets for the day, but there are tons of other fun (and free!) things to do in the immediate area, as this very helpful guide in the visitor center explained to us. We decided on two activities right away: seeing the Liberty Bell and visiting Franklin Court.
In line to see the Liberty Bell. Notice David playing with his iphone. He is so in love with that thing. He kept using it to look up where we were and give us background information. He was like a little kid with a toy he wanted us to covet. And it kind of worked...I want one.
The bell. I had seen it once before--way back in third grade, but I don't remember getting this close to it. And hey--I even got a shot of the crack. (Ha ha.)
Vogel wondering why I am taking so long to snap the picture. Sorry. But I posted this one in part because of dude in the back who is making a peace sign. What kind of adult does this in someone else's picture? It made me laugh, actually. I guess he couldn't help himself.
A much better shot.
Not sure what David is doing here. I think it's his impression of Tina Fey doing Sarah Palin holding a shotgun. (He had just watched the SNL clip of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler).
Now the non-silly shot.
After the Bell, we headed down to Franklin Court. On the way, we laughed at this sign. "Check out that funny looking lady!" I said, before my friends explained that it was supposed to be Ben Franklin in a chef's hat. Still...pretty lady-like, we thought.
"Life-size Jellybean Children and Butterflies"? Huh? Sounds terrifying to me. It was an exhibit here.
Soon we arrived at Franklin Court, where Ben Franklin's house used to stand and which today boasts an underground museum (tell me that "underground" doesn't make it sound a thousand times cooler!). Notice the white sign in this picture. It explains that Franklin would have walked through this little alleyway every day. I thought that was pretty awesome and asked Vogel and David to pretend they were Franklin walking through. Vogel, who is always happy to oblige my photo-shoot demands, did her best. David...not so much.
Here they are both next to the sign. Notice Vogel's arm. She still can't stop acting like Franklin walking home.
Franklin's house was torn down about 20 years after he died, but there are some very important markers of the structures that used to be there, like, for instance, his father-in-law's toilet.
Or Franklin's privy!
Inside the the underground (ohhh!) museum we saw lots of Franklin's inventions, including this one that impressed us the most: a chair with a built-in step ladder.
I also liked this one--a four-sided music stand so that a quartet could play.
After the room of inventions, we entered this huge space with dozens of phone and a wall of numbers. You could dial an extension and "talk" to a famous person who was influenced by Franklin in some way. It's a pretty cool way of illustrating just how influential Franklin was and is. We called Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain, among others. Vogel loved the phones so much that it was hard to tear her away.
At the end of the museum there was a little theater showing a Franklin Film Festival--including Ben and Me, which I adored as a kid and would have loved to see again. But we were about 40 minutes away from the next show and David was getting hungry. He was also getting entirely too jealous of Franklin. "Man, how come I never invented anything?" he asked. So we moved on.
After a brief stop for a drink and a snack, we walked through a park where some well...interesting performance art was going on.
Now admittedly, we only stayed for a little while to listen to this guy sing about rivers (represented by the blue tarp behind him), so it could be that the show was very good. But just the part we saw left us trying not to laugh out loud (and getting dirty looks from a Ben Franklin impersonator nearby.) Let's just say he rhymed like Adam Sandler's "Cajun Man" and used works like "olfaction" and "putrification" as his end rhymes. You can read just a bit about him here.
After walking around a bit more, we headed back to Vogel's, crashed for a bit, and then had a lovely dinner here. The next day it was back to WV for me and NC for David. Still, it was a great little visit.
2 comments:
Looks like you guys had fun!! I have never been there... Maybe I will have to take a trip up there with you one of these days.
This was an awesome posting! I felt like I was there and was a little jealous that I was not. What funny pictures! You guys crack me up. And, I agree, that Ben Franklin in a chef's hat totally looks like a woman. I thought the same thing when I saw the picture. Oh, and, crack!! Ha, ha, that was funny.
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