History, Heat, and Ice Cream: A Day in Philadelphia with Kids

Travel date: June 2, 2018

We’ve been to Philadelphia several times now, and it seems like something always pops up to keep us from having the perfect day there. Like the time we were walking back to our car after visiting the Franklin Institute and the skies suddenly opened up with the most apocalyptic rainstorm we’ve ever encountered…..couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces type of thing. Or how we misjudged the distance from our campground another time and wound up feeling totally rushed through Independence Park and then sitting in a whole lot of rush hour traffic. Or how we went and had another kid seven years after our third one was born, prolonging indefinitely that period when we cannot peacefully tour museums and historic houses.

But this time–this time–was going to be different!

Meh.

We had a nice day in Philadelphia, and we saw some stuff we hadn’t managed to get to in past trips, and we had really good ice cream…..but it was also super, unseasonably hot and muggy and constantly threatening to rain (and we are very gun shy about getting caught in Philadelphia rain), and the mint wasn’t making any money because it was a weekend, so….I guess we’ll still have to try again someday.

You can read about our last trip to Philadelphia, two years ago, here. We did a lot of Independence National Park then and more of it this year. And you can read about the campground we stayed at here: the Philadelphia South KOA, a really nice campground surprisingly close to the city (about 25 minutes away).

Our day started with an ill fated first attempt at using Parking Panda. Last time we were in Philadelphia, we had a really hard time finding parking with for our big old van and ended up at a metered spot we could only stay in for two hours. So this time we reserved a spot in advance in a lot maybe half a mile away from all the historic stuff. But Parking Panda was an utter failure; we couldn’t get the gate to open like it was supposed to, so we ended up having to pay a second time (the lot had plenty of space in it, so there hadn’t really been any need to reserve in advance, it turned out). We did get a refund eventually, but it took a long time and several phone calls/e-mails.

But we did get a parking spot, and we headed off to see the Liberty Bell. Last time we were there, we’d skipped it because the line was ridiculously long. It was still crowded this time, but there wasn’t much of a wait to get into the building…just not much space to spread out or to get good photos of the liberty bell once you were inside.

You go through security to get into the building, and then make your way through a hall of exhibits about the history of the bell before making it to the end and seeing the real thing.

We also got Abe’s Junior Ranger badge here, something we hadn’t had time for last time. The visitors center is under construction right now, so there’s not much in the way of exhibits inside–at least not ones you can get to.

There’s a TON to do in the park (which is not a self-contained park, but an area in the city where lots of sites of Revolutionary significance are clustered), but a lot of it is very museum/historic house-y, and Abe was in no condition for that (as a reminder, the first week or so of a long trip with Abe is….fraught with emotion). We’d seen Independence Hall on our last trip, so we focused this time on a pretty thorough exploration of Franklin Court, which we’ve found to be one of the more kid-friendly areas of the park.

There’s the Benjamin Franklin Museum, which is small enough to see in an hour so, and which prominently features Skuggs the Squirrel, a fictional squirrel based in fact; Franklin loved to keep pet squirrels.

We also spent some time in the Fragments of Franklin Court exhibit, checking out what remains of a house Franklin constructed as a rental house; there’s a lot of interesting information about architecture of the day and about Franklin’s own fire safety innovations:

Another thing to check out, particularly if you have kids with you, is the storytelling benches and costumed interpreters spread around the park. These programs are through a partnership called Once Upon a Nation with HistoricPhiladelphia.org. Storytellers are spread throughout the park, telling colorful historical anecdotes. We only caught one of these, but if we’d had more time or the weather had been better we’d have loved to see more. There are 13 in all, and kids can collect stickers at each one to put on a US flag souvenir.

All the history made us hungry, so we went off in search of ice cream and found it at the very popular Franklin Fountain, continuing our Ben Franklin theme for the day:

The ice cream was excellent; the mint chocolate chip actually had visible mint leaves in it. Abe got a Coke float:

We considered a lot of different options for our last stop of the day, but we finally decided on doing a self guided tour of the US Mint.

The thing we didn’t think about was that it was a Saturday, so no actual minting was going on. It was still an interesting tour (you get to look through big windows at the factory floor, and there are lots of signs explaining everything to you. Also an exhibit area with historical information and a short film), but it was kind of a let down not to get to see the coins being made. If we had it do over again, I’d skip it if we were there on a weekend. Also, no photos allowed inside, so that one of the outside is all I’ve got for you. If I showed you pictures of the inside, you’d probably get to work recreating it and minting your own coins in your basement.

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