Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 15 years and 9 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

We spent today in the City of Brotherly Love: Philadelphia, PA … our first day without any serious driving since last Saturday.

The day started at the Independence Visitor Center after which we just started walking around the historic downtown area. Check out this great ad (to the let) for an iPod-assisted walking tour of Signers’ Hall in Constitution Center. In the gift shop of the museum, I found t-shirts sporting four black presidential silhouettes (Franklin, Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson I think) rocking out with their distinctive white earbuds. I wonder if Apple is aware of that? 😉

In the Christ Church burial ground we saw Benjamin Franklin’s grave and my daughter went on a scavenger hunt to find the seven signers of the Declaration of Independence buried there. Four more (besides Franklin) were in the cemetary: Francis Hopkinson, Joseph Hewes, George Ross, and Dr. Benjamin Rush. We had to walk over to the church proper to find the other two: Robert Morris and James Wilson.

Next was the Liberty Bell, of course. In its new location in the Liberty Bell center, it rests with a beautiful backdrop of Independence Hall viewed through a massive glass wall. Very cool.

Our final stop was at the U.S. Mint. Unfortunately, no cameras (or camera phones!) are allowed in the building so we had to go back to the car to drop everything off before heading back for the tour. After a long hallway of historical information and objects, you’re suddenly looking through windows down into the huge factory-like area where the coiled sheets of metal are loaded into huge machines that stamp out the blank coins. The blanks are whisked away in little buckets on conveyor belts to the stampers where they are imprinted with the proper signage. It was amazing to see what looked like millions of blank copper pennies shooting by below us.

After all of this walking we were starved, so we drove over to the Reading Terminal Market for lunch. My daughter and I split a cheese steak at Rick’s (her first one) … mmmm! After dining we shopped around in the market, picking up some fresh fruit and seafood for dinner back at my brother-in-law’s and sister-in-law’s 1887 Victorian home in Cheyney, PA (during our visit, I learned that my brother-in-law runs a blog about Victorian furniture called Rare Victorian, neat!)

Tomorrow: more driving.