Day 2 of Philadelphia

We arrived in Philadelphia at around 8am this am to get in line for the free tickets to see the Pennsylvania's first state house which is known as Independence Hall. The free tickets are timed and given out by the Parks Department at Philadelphia's Visitor Center. I am really glad we were in line early, by the time the doors opened at the visitors center, there was 60-70 people behind us to get tickets. Our tickets were timed at 9am, which is the first tour of the day. There were about 50 people in the tour, it was really interesting, but we have been spoiled at the pictures that we could take. No way could we stand even close to the Senate or representative chamber for pictures. As you can see we were kinda jammed against a wall/doorway to get our traditional picture in the senate.



At the start of the tour it was about 85 degrees and it just got hotter from there.

This is where the founding fathers met and talked about the pro's and con's of splitting from Great Britain.

This small statue representing freedom was atop the large painting above.

This is the room where the Constitution was finalized and signed on July 2, 1776 and on July 8th 1776, they read it to a group of people in the back gardens. We had a fascinating park ranger, that was easy to listen to and had great information that we did not know.

Our next stop, across the park, was the liberty bell. We were very fortunate, there was no line and we got right in and took our pictures with out too much interruption from other tourist. This was an awesome site and we neither one of us will forget it. Last time I saw the liberty bell it was sitting outside and I could walk up and touch it. ( I am dating myself)



After the Liberty Bell we hopped on the open air tour bus and went to city hall. It was absolutely ornate and unique and well worth our time. It had been recommended to us that we go to the observation deck and see the city from there. We had the last tickets sold for the day (11am) because of the extreme heat. We took an elevator, then an escalator and lastly a very small elevator to the top. The last elevator to the observation deck only held 5 people-we were all average size and our shoulders touched and wow it was really hot.

On the top of the city hall is a statue of William Penn-In his brim 3 city buses could fit. The observation level is just below W. Penn's shoes.

 

View from the top

When we were walking down from the observation tower we saw an old switch board sitting in the hall. What a wonderful site, we had never seen one before.

We asked for recommendation for lunch and hands down people told us to go to the Reading railroad market. It looked non decrypt from the outside-but the inside was 1/2 city block of an unbelievable food booths-from an oyster bar to Amish bake goods. We chose Chinese food and it was the absolute best Chinese food I have ever had. I had 3 different types of dumplings in a clear chicken broth.

 

This was our last visit for the day-interesting-but we were really tired  and hot so we didn't spend alot of time here.