Philadelphia

We headed up to Philadelphia the other day to see the King Tut exhibition. We got ourselves 9 am timed-entry tickets, so we decided to take the 3 hour trip the night before. The original plan was to meet up with my friend Carol, spend the afternoon with her family, let her feed us, then go to our cheap airport hotel for the night. Except I didn’t bother telling Carol until like 3 days before and she was way too busy to have us over. Hmph. So we came up with the alternate plan of going to the Academy of Natural Sciences for the afternoon.

It was a great plan, but we failed to account for not knowing our way around Philadelphia and needing to find parking. We located the museum ok, thanks mostly to our GPS. Finding parking was an entirely different story. Parking lots wanted $5 for the first 20 minutes and almost $15 for 2 hours. Ouch. Then as we were wandering around, someone pulled out of a metered space on the street! Yay us! We took our time unloading the children and stroller from the car and then we realized that our meter was out of order! Sweet! The meter maid that was walking along let us know that we still had to comply with the 2 hour limit, which was just fine with us. So off to the museum!

It was a great museum with lots of hands on stuff for the kids and a live animal demonstration. Boo and Pumpkin even got to participate in an archaeological dig for dinosaurs.

The highlight for me was the live butterfly exhibit. I got lots of good pictures.

I liked this Owl Eye butterfly having a snack on a banana.(above)

They were very proud of this Queen Alexandra Bird Wing butterfly which had just come out of the cocoon the day before. These butterflies can have a wingspan of up to 1 foot. I happened to get this picture before I even knew what kind of butterfly it was.

One landed on me!

We got back to our car just as our 2 hours of free parking were up. My stomach was rebelling against the Taco Bell we’d eaten for lunch en route, so we decided to head for our hotel earlier than planned. I was a bit hesitant about our hotel. It was cheap and near the airport, which made it pretty close to where we needed to be in the morning. It had the usual free continental breakfast, but no pool. Reviews for it and other hotels near it said that the neighborhood wasn’t the best, but the hotel fine. I just didn’t want to be stuck in the hotel with 3 active kids with nothing to do so we had planned on eating an early dinner downtown. But with the parking what it was and having to move the car anyway, plus my touchy stomach, we thought we’d just go to the hotel. We hoped we’d spot some family friendly place to eat along the way.

Well, like the free parking spot earlier, the hotel was a great surprise. The area was far from questionable, in fact there was nothing at all down this particular street but other hotels. Well, that and a Ruby Tuesdays! Our hotel was big, bright and clean and had interior hallways. Our room had two queen size beds and a window seat. We were very pleased. Dinner at Ruby Tuesdays was nice, then we came back, watched a couple of episodes of the Brady Bunch on our portable DVD player, then we all went to bed early. It was a good thing, too, because Bip didn’t sleep well at all. He was up all night. Ug. It was a l-o-n-g night and I was just praying I wouldn’t wake up with a sleep deprivation headache. The only cure for those is more sleep. I woke up fine, if just a little groggy and we managed to get our crew out the door by 8:15 to make it to the Franklin Institute by 9.

Next time: King Tut and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs

Did we spend more money at the museum cafeteria or the gift store? Did we get kicked out of the exhibit for taking pictures? Who started to cry? Did my friend Carol ever manage to make time to see us? Who ended up soaking wet from head to foot by the end of the day? Tune in tomorrow to find out!

Standing at the top of the stairs in front of the Franklin Institute

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