Weekend in Philadelphia

By the end of the summer I'm almost always itching to go somewhere.  I usually take two ski trips a year and a long weekend in the spring.  During the summer - when everyone on a school schedule is traveling - I try to stay home, albeit in the sweltering heat.  By the time school starts I'm ready to go somewhere, anywhere, just away from here.

I noticed US Airways had some pretty good fares to Philadelphia and I'd never been there.  I checked with my usual travel pals C and D to see if they wanted to join me.  C was in as she'd never been to Philly either but D had been there before and wasn't sure a weekend of history was her cup of tea - not to mention she'd need to take a full day off just to travel across the country.

So we booked a room at the Holiday Inn Historic District and it suited our needs perfectly.  It lives up to its name it that it's only a short walk to the center of all things historical in our nation's one-time capital.

We arrived on Thursday night, which gave us a full 2.5 days to walk our feet off.  And walk we did.  At the top of our list were the two most obvious sites: Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.  Beyond that we saw Declaration House (where Jefferson rented rooms while writing the document), Christ Church Cemetery (where Ben Franklin and 3 other signers of the Declaration are buried), Betsy Ross's house, Congress Hall, the Todd House (where Dolley Madison lived with her first husband, John Todd, and the place where she was formally introduced to James Madison), the portrait gallery in the Second Bank of the US building and more.  Most of these sites are part of the National Park Service and there's no charge to see them, though some require tickets or reservations which can be made at the Independence Visitor's Center.

Two-and-a-half days is the perfect amount of time needed for this historic roundup, in my opinion.  With neither of us being used to walking all day long we were able to pop back to the room for relaxing for a little while before dinner each night.

We had dinner at City Tavern on Friday night and it was wonderful.  All the staff is in colonial period costume and addresses guests as Master/Mistress, etc.  It's more than I'd normally pay for dinner but the food was excellent and the restaurant is part of the dining program so I earned miles for it too!

There's a lot more of Philadelphia that we didn't get to see but we soaked up a lot of history in a short amount of time. Next time we'll have a car and venture beyond walking distance.