Philadelphia....A Lot of Pictures!

We had so much fun on our Spring Break vacation! It was so neat to see a place that had so much history. The trip started out early Tuesday morning. I drove to the Washington DC airport to pick up Calvin and Camden from their flight home from Nevada. They were supposed to have one more plane ride from DC to Raleigh, but we decided to save time, since DC was on our way to Philadelphia, and save them from one more plane ride. After I picked the boys up, we saw the Washington DC temple just off the freeway. I hurried and snapped a picture!

Camden got a good nap on the way to Philadelphia, and Calvin slept for about an hour. When we got there, we checked into our hotel, and then headed out to do one of the activities on our City Pass. We spent a couple hours at the Philadelphia Zoo, the first zoo in the United States. I was so excited to see flowers coming up! The weather was beautiful.

We saw a couple different bears. We helped feed the polar bears and watched them jump into the water.

We brought back a lion cub! Camden has been roaring ever since. He says, "roar!" then when we say, "ahhh!" he says, "I scared you." It's really cute.

After the zoo, we went back to the hotel to relax. We all took a nap and woke up at 9 o'clock! We were so tired! We decided to just eat some sandwiches and snacks I had packed and watched some TV until we could convince Camden to go back to sleep.

On Wednesday morning, we headed to Camden, NJ, just across the river from our hotel, to the aquarium. We had so much fun, touching sharks, sting rays, and jelly fish, seeing penguins, seals, hippos, lots of fish, turtles, and more. After the touching part, Camden would go up to a regular aquarium or tank and say, "touch 'em."

We then hopped on the Philadelphia trolley tour. It was really neat to learn about the history of the city, the buildings, etc. I think the tour was one of our favorite parts. We stopped off for an hour at the Please Touch Museum, a museum for kids. It was the location of the World's Fair in 1876.

They had a lot of fun exhibts. These pictures were in the Mother Goose/Fairy Tale area.

Camden liked the carousel.

We got back on the tour and stopped at the Benjamin Franklin museum. We saw an exhibit about the human heart and also an area with some trains. There was also an area about planes and flight. Pretty cool!

By the time we got back on the tour and over to the Liberty Bell center, Camden was out!

And here it is! The Liberty Bell.

We then walked over to Chinatown where we had a delicious Chinese meal. We also got some very good treats at a Chinese Bakery. I can't wait to have the real thing in Hong Kong! Yum!

On the way home, we took a detour so that we could tour Gettysburg. We bought an audio tour cd that you play while driving around to the different points on the battlefield. I am definitely glad we did this; it was such a large area and it would have been a totally different experience without the guide. We learned so much!

It was a great trip! We are so lucky to be here, within driving distance of so many neat places!