Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell & Dinner with Friends [Philadelphia]

Time for the last vacation post! After our visit to the Franklin Park Zoo, we hopped in the car and got on the road to Philadelphia. I visited Philadelphia when I was 14 and I loved it. It's a city full of massive amounts of history and I wanted to take KBug to see just some bits and pieces of it. She has a love for historical places, so I thought it would be a lot of fun for her!

We got to Philadelphia at a little after 1 in the morning, checked into our hotel and crashed for the night. All of us were ridiculously tired!

The next morning we all woke up, showered, dressed and enjoyed a quick breakfast at the hotel. Mr. Boston loved our hotel room and decided he wanted picture proof that we had stayed there. So I have random pictures of our hotel room. He's a little weird, but I love him!

 

Anyways. Once we were all ready to go, we headed out! We had reserved our tickets for a tour of Independence Hall in advance, so all we had to do was drive into the city, find a parking garage and make our way to the Independence Visitor Center. It took some doing, but we eventually made it, found the ticket pick-up and set out to our tour. I got distracted by the gift shop on the way, though, and took some time to purchase a few new books for KBug!

We made it through security quickly and had about 15 minutes to wait. We took a few pictures, did some people watching and enjoyed the sunshine!

 

After a short wait, we stepped in line to begin our tour. KBug was really ready to get it going and couldn't hardly stand still. It was great to see her so excited about our nations history! We made our way into the room where they introduce the tour and tell you a little bit about the history of Independence Hall. After our short introduction, we were led into the hall to continue our history lesson.

 

 

By the end of the tour, KBug was ready for me to stop taking pictures of her. But I told her she was out of luck because I love taking pictures of her! So she relented and continued to let me snap away!

 

After the Independence Hall, we walked back across the street to tour the Liberty Bell Center. The Liberty Bell was my favorite part of visiting Philadelphia and I couldn't wait to go back and spend some time reading about it's history and the repairs that were made when the damage occurred. Unfortunately KBug wasn't as interested in reading her way, though, so I had to speed read, but I managed.

 

 

Once we reached the end of the Liberty Bell Center, KBug dragged Mr. Boston and I outside. She had seen an opportunity for a ride on a horse and carriage and she didn't want to leave Philadelphia without taking a ride. It was our last day of vacation and Mr. Boston and I were a bit weary of walking after everything we'd done over the last week that we easily agreed. So up in the carriage we went to enjoy a ride through Independence National Historical Park.

 

 

At the end of the carriage ride, we decided it was time to head back to the hotel. We had dinner plans with a few of my friends that evening and we all needed some rest and relaxation. So back we went. A few hours later we headed out to the Cheesecake Factory down the road to enjoy a nice evening with some fabulous people!

 

I've known my friend M since the day I moved to NC. He was literally the first person I met upon arriving. And he's been my friend ever since. When he started dating his wife, L, I was so excited for him. He was so happy and life was going wonderfully for them! Since then they've gotten married and had a beautiful baby, M Jr. It was great when they lived here because L has a daughter, too, and KC is only a couple of years older than KBug. So we were always able to get together and have some peaceful conversation while the girls were off playing. Win! Anyways. They moved away earlier this year and I've really missed them, so it was really awesome to see them again!

 

 

And that was our day in Philadelphia! We went back to the hotel that night, watched Tarzan (I told you all I wanted to watch it...), ran three loads of laundry and collapsed. After all of our vacation adventures we were pretty dead on our feet. But we had a long trip ahead of us the following morning and we couldn't wait to get back home!