Vacation

So I finally got around to uploading all of our vacation pictures and now I don't know where to begin. I guess we'll just take it a city at a time. So back to Philadelphia. After spending the night there we got up and walked down to the historic district. We heard that tickets to see a lot fo the sites are free but you have to book them way in advance so we weren't sure that we would be able to see anything, but it turns out most people are not dying to see Independence Hall in December so we had no problem getting in.

So first we toured Independence Hall and we even got to go upstairs since our group was about half the size of the groups that tour in the summer, and then we visited the Liberty Bell.

After that it was on to tour the home of Betsy Ross and we stopped by Benjamin Franklin's printing press. Then we took the bus across town to spend the rest of the day and the Philadelphia Museum on Art. There were tons of people there copying Rocky's run up the front steps, but I settled for a picture with his statue. The premiere of the new Rocky movie was in town the next day so everyone on the news was all excited about the stars in town.

The museum was amazing and there was something for everyone. A Rothko for Larry . . .
Sunflowers for Steph (I'm not sure why I look so crabby in this picture)
And a great view of the city for everyone to enjoy.

There were a lot of interesting things going on while we were in the city. On our first night we arrived just in time to witness our first Hannkah parade. The main street was blocked off and there were tons of regular cars with huge metal menorah's displayed on top of them driving around. The next night, as we just about finished our tour of the museum I mentioned to Larry, "We timed this perfectly, I think it's almost time for them to close" and right then five guards walked into the room and said, "The Museum is now closed. Leave Immediately!" and they hustled us along with several other guests out into the main lobby and toward the exit. There was never a bell or warning or any kind of announcement, all of the sudden there were just guards everywhere telling people to leave. I tried to get Larry to take a picture of the fifty or so guards walking down the stairs together rushing everyone out, but another guard told us security pictures were prohibited.

Monday morning we toured the US mint before heading to New York. The tour wasn't as thrilling as I remember the Tour of the DC Mint being, but we learned there's a little letter on most coins indicating where they were made so now Larry likes to scour all of our coins for little letter P's to see if they were made in Philly (all pennies are made there so they don't indicate where they are made).