RonnieAdventure #0098 - Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.

Since Philadelphia is just across the river from the New Jersey Battleship, we decided to spend a day in the "City of Brotherly Love," also known as the "Cradle of Liberty." Philadelphia is home to Independence Hall and the location of where the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were both signed and adopted. It also served as the meeting place for the United States Congress for several years and the place where George Washington served as president from 1790 to 1797.

On the lighter side, Philadelphia is the birthplace of the Philly Cheesesteak sandwich, one of the most haunted cities in the United States with one of the highest densities of haunted houses, Grace Kelly's birthplace (both her Farther and Grandfather won Olympic metals), and the place where the game of Monopoly originated. Apparently, while babysitting his children one night while his wife was away, a guy got the idea for the Monopoly game, but he did not have a large sheet of paper, so drew the game on his wife's white linen table cloth. They tell us that she forgave him after he made his first million. Did you know that Philadelphia is where the first fully electronic computer in the world was designed and built and at the time it was more than a thousand times faster than any other computing device?

We started the day out by taking a two hour bus tour around the City to get an overview of where everything was located; and, since it was a beautiful spring day, I sat on the upper deck so that I could take pictures. We had a very knowledgeable tour guide and, in addition to learning a lot of interesting facts about the City, we were entertained for the entire trip. The bus went around all of the historic downtown area first and then expanded the tour to include the US Mint, China Town, City Hall, Love Park, Logan Square, the Museum of Art (If you got off of the bus, you could run up the steps and have your picture taken with Rocky.), the Eastern State Penitentiary (This looked interesting, but we ran out of time to take the tour.), the Please Touch Museum & Memorial Hall (They ran out of money to operate the museum, so they sold the horse statues in front of the building. Unfortunately, the buyers had to sign a form that they would never move the statues from their current locations.), the Philadelphia Zoo, and numerous other places.

After the bus trip, we visited Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, where we found out that "Pennsylvania" is not misspelled on the Bell. When the bell was forged, the State did not have an official spelling and "Pensylvania" was considered to be acceptable.

A short walk down the street from the Liberty Bell brought us to Christ Church, where George Washington, Betsy Ross, Benjamin Franklin, and many others attended services. The Church was founded in 1695 and was the first parish of the Church of England in Pennsylvania. It is also the birthplace of the American Episcopal Church. The burial ground is the final resting place for Benjamin Franklin and four other signers of the Declaration of Independence.

About another block down the street is the Betsy Ross house where the first American Flag was designed and sewn by Betsy Ross in her small upholstery shop.

The large bust of Benjamin Franklin is also located in this same general area. The last time I visited Philadelphia the bust was covered in bright, shinny pennies; but apparently tourist borrowed too many pennies for souvenirs, so now the bust is just painted with penny impressions.