Joe's New Blog

Nothing special, this is just my third effort at writing a blog about my life and what goes on in it: Hobbies, cooking, work, maybe the occasional book or DVD review, and so forth. Nothing really noteworthy, but this is sort of a little subset of my world...

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Philadelphia, Part 2

After leaving the vicinity of Carpenters' Hall, we continued on slowly toward Independence Hall. Both my girlfriend and I were still feeling a bit sore from walking all over Washington yesterday, so we weren't exactly feeling like sprinting around all the historical sites all over the place. At least everything was spaced a little closer together here in Philly.

Some other buildings and such we saw along the way included the Second Bank of the United States:
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The Second Bank had this statue of Robert Morris out front:
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I know I'm expressing my ignorance of things I should probably know, but aside from the fact that there's a university named after him, I know nothing at all about who Robert Morris is.

This is part of the Library of the American Philosophical Society, founded by Ben Franklin:
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Not sure exactly which buildings there are:
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Then we were just across the street from Independence Hall:
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Unlike when I was a kid and visited with the family, they now have the access to the building itself pretty well controlled, and funneled through one entrance at the front of the building. But here are a few shots from the back, where you can at least stand around in the park-like setting and look at things:
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The statue in front of Independence Hall (or really, behind it, I think...):
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And here's the spire of the Hall itself:
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And the door on one of the side wings:
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Once we walked around the front and got inside, I took a few more snaps of the tower and such from much closer. Perhaps too close:
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They had these odd little octagonal outhouses. I doubt they were actually operational, but I thought they looked kind of odd sitting out in the plaza:
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And here's a plaque they have in the plaza, talking a little about the history and such. If you click it and go to the larger view in the photostream, it is actually pretty legible:
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Like the Washington Monument, Independence Hall requires you to get a free timed ticket to take their tour. We had been keeping an eye on the time, and even if we felt like going through the tour, we would have had to run back to the car and feed more quarters into the meter. And, since it appeared that there were a bunch of people waiting for the current tour, we decided that we were just going to have to pass this time around. So, with about twenty minutes left on the meter, we decided to cut our visit short and head back toward the car. I would have liked to have seen the Liberty Bell again, but I didn't think it was worth risking a parking ticket in Philly...

Here's a last parting glance at Independence Hall through the trees:
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We saw a number of interesting things as we made our way back to the car. The Pennsylvania Fire Insurance Company building has a modern office building sort of molded around it:
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A lot of the buildings have very ornate doorways and ornamentation on the walls:
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Another shot of the Second Bank of the United States:
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And here's the 18th Century Garden:
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We apparently walked past a few other gardens on the other side of the street, but we completely missed them. Honestly, I didn't even see any gardens, only buildings along the street, but the map says they're supposed to be there. I guess it doesn't matter too much anyway, because my battery died right around the time that I was taking the pictures of the 18th Century Garden. So then it was back to the car, and it's time for us to get our show back on the road...

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