The Mac and Cheese Chronicles

Part 1 of our Philadelphia adventure is here: Philadelphia

So we were off to a decent start after a rough night. We arrived at the Franklin Institute with enough time to get parking in their lot, pick up our tickets at Will Call and get in line. I am so glad that we got such early tickets because there was absolutely no wait to get in to either the museum or the King Tut exhibit.

The exhibit was amazing! We just wrapped up a year long study of ancient Egypt, which included studying King Tut specificially and watching several documetaries from NetFlix on the discovery of his tomb. Our studies more than prepared us for what we were seeing, and helped me to explain and paraphrase things for Boo and Pumpkin Girl. I was very disappointed that taking pictures was not allowed – we even had to turn off our cell phones and beepers. The ambience of exhibit was carefully constructed with lighting and subtle music. We started off in well lit rooms with treasures of some of Tutankhamun’s ancestors. Displays on the walls helped to establish the political climate that exhisted prior to Tut’s rule and how it effected his reign. This was all familiar to us already which made it even more exciting.

One of my favorite pieces was the coffin of his great-grandmother and her funeral mask. I like her little smile, like she’s just happy to be here.

The next few exhibit rooms were devoted to Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Their treasures were equally beautiful, but then it was time for Tut. The excitement grew as the rooms darkened and the music became more mysterious. We climbed a ramp that led to rooms filled with Tut’s treasures.

It would take me all day to describe everything we saw. Articles that were found on the mummy itself, statues, toys, every day items were all on display. This coffinette, only about 14 inches tall was just exquisite. I could have stayed and looked at it all day. It is inscribed (in hieroglyphics, of course) all over the inside and it once held Tut’s mummified internal organs. Tutankhamun’s famous funeral mask was not included in the exhibit because it is no longer allowed to leave Egypt. I knew this before hand, so we weren’t too disappointed.

Don’t worry, I didn’t take any of these pictures myself.

Two hours later, we were finished with the exhibit. We were all glad that we saw it, all except poor Bip. He was in such a foul mood from having not slept well. He whined through about half the exhibit, not wanting to be in the stroller or in either my sling or Philip’s. He even starting crying until we threatened to stick him in a corner by himself while we finished walking around. Fortunately he didn’t realize we couldn’t actually do that and he quieted down. Eventually he fell asleep in Philip’s sling.

The exhibited conveniently deposited us right into the Tut gift shop. We spent a small fortune, mostly because I couldn’t leave without a hardcover copy of the exhibit catalog. By then Bip was awake and hungry, so we went down to the museum cafeteria, where we spent another small fortune. Actually, it wasn’t that bad and I was able to find something non-fried, yet tasty for myself.

After spending a little more time in the rest of the museum, we took off for New Jersey to see my friend Carol. There we were in NJ and I didn’t make one Sopranos joke.  Nope, I made three.  Just couldn’t help it. We had a great time and Carol made us her famous chicken parmesan for dinner. Yum! Our children had fun playing together and somehow Boo got attacked by a sprinkler and ended up soaking wet. Fortunately, this was after dinner and we had already planned to put the kids in their pajamas for the ride home.

Our ride home was uneventful, which is always a good thing!

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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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