Today was about Philly, but first, we had to get there. Barbara was driving today so I could navigate. There was a lot of construction, and we made a few wrong turns during the day, so the driving part was a little stressful. It was also a 100 degree day, so we spent a lot of time “melting.”

Our first stop was Independence Hall. Mostly, I wanted to shoot a short video for classroom use. We did that, saw the Liberty Bell, and then went to Benjamin Franklin’s grave. Down the street a ways, we also saw Betsy Ross’s house. That ended the easy walking part of our trip. Site two was where the museums were. Unfortunately, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has no parking. We spent a lot of time looking for a place to park and wound up parking by the Barnes Museum, which is an AWESOME museum, even with five rooms under renovation. The Philadelphia Museum of Art was a mile away, but we walked to it. We went up the “Rocky” steps then toured the very large museum, some of which was under construction. We cut through the park to shorten our mile walk back to the car. The third stop was to the best Philly Cheese Steak place in Philly, and those sandwiches were very good. Last stop was to the University of Pennsylvania so Barbara could buy some banners.

Since I knew that our Hamburg motel would be a dump (and it was), I decided to splurge on a room tonight in Philadelphia. Because I had booked so late, I saved 30%! This was a Windham studio apartment. The girls swam in the pool while I watched Team USA lose to the Belgian’s in overtime. The place served free lasagna and beer so that’s what we had for dinner.