Philadelphia Independence Center

We got up early this morning and headed to Philadelphia, about an hour from our RV Park location in Intercourse Pennsylvania. We first headed to Independence Visitor Center to obtain tickets to see Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights were authored and signed.

The Independence Hall tour begins with a 30 minute film of the Independence of the United States and the fight with Britain. The tour then moves to the Supreme Court, which was originally officed in Independence Center in Philadelphia from 1791 until 1799, when moved to Washington DC. The other room was the Assembly Room, the actual location where the Delegates from each of the 13 states met, debated and approved the Constitution of the United States, along with the Bill of Rights 11 years later. Additionally, the US Congress met in Congress Hall from 1790 to 1800.

We also learned additional information about the initial establishment of Congress. We found out that one of the biggest obstacles for the new Congress was a debate and arguments between the larger and smaller states. The larger states argued that they should have more say than the smaller states and the smaller states argued that they should have equal say in matters concerning the nation. Apparently Connecticut came to the rescue by offering a resolution that there be two branches of Congress...one that provided representatives based on population, i.e., the United States Congress and the second resolution was the creation of the Senate, in which each state would be equally representatives, resolving conflicts from smaller states without large populations...and that's why there are two branches in Congress--the House of Representatives and Senate, with varying numbers of representatives by state. Isn't that interesting? Mark took lot's of pictures of both rooms.

On another important note, the room which housed the first and second Congress, also has the actual chair that Washington set in to conduct business for the 10 years congress was located in Philadelphia...it was also the chair he was sitting in when he actually signed the final draft of the Constitution of the United States.

We then went to see the Liberty Bell Center, where the Liberty Bell is housed. It summoned the Pennsylvania Assembly to debate the Stamp Act and other burdensome actions by the British Parliament. The original Liberty Bell actually cracked sometime between 1817 and 1846. It isn't known exactly when it cracked. It was recast by a local craftsman when cracked.

We also went to Franklin Square, the actual location of Benjamin Franklin's home while serving in Congress. There are remnants of Franklin's home that still remain and are encased for viewing. Just down the street from Franklin's home is a small cemetery where he's buried. The majority of that cemetary are graves from the 1700's...very few that died into the 1800's, it's that old! There were many other exhibits housed between the locations that we checked out, including 5 row houses that Benjamin Franklin had built as rental houses and one for his printing company...all of the homes are from the mid to late 1700's and remain intact, each are still private homes at this time.

Lastly, after a day full of exhibits, we made a stop a Pat King's Philadelphia Steak sandwich, which is the restaurant that originally created the Philadelphia Cheesesteak sandwich in the early 1900's. On our way to Pat King's, our GPS had us going up and down multiple streets within downtown Philadelphia and discovered that just about every street has Food Carts with various kinds of food for sell. I knew food wagons on street corners was popular in New York/Manhattan, but they're apparently just as popular in downtown Philly as well. It was good and I'm glad we made the stop for the historic cheesesteaks from the originator, but not sure it was worth the $8.00 a piece that each one cost! Overall, we had another wonderful day, though we were both exhausted from all the walking by the time we left.

Mark took lot's of pictures and I'll get them uploaded to the slideshow as soon as I can. We'll be here in Pennsylvania through tomorrow and will be heading to Flordia, New York Saturday morning. Looks like Florida NY is as close as we can get to New York city via an RV Park. We're hoping to take the NY Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We rarely take actual tours as they're just too costly, when you can just go directly to most places for free, or nominal bus/train fares. But we might have to break down and take a bus tour to get to the New York/Manhattan areas. Well, that's the latest scoop on what we've been up to...pictures from today will be uploaded as soon as I can. Until later~