Philadelphia! (part one)

Sunday after church we drove to the Cornwall Iron Furnace, which was built in 1742 and is the only one in North America to survive fully intact. Because it was Charter Day, admission was free, and they were giving free guided tours. Our next stop was the Conrad Weiser Homestead. We arrived after the free guided tours had ended, but we were able to interact with various costumed demonstrators and watch a reenactment of a skirmish from the time of the French and Indian War. Oliver spent a lot of time watching a man carving spoons out of blocks of wood. None of us had been at either of these places before. The event at the Conrad Weiser Homestead was very similar to the one we often go to in our town in September. We had packed our lunches, and we went through a Wendy's drive-thru for dinner on our way to Philadelphia. When we checked in at the hotel, I was told they don't have any cots here. I had asked for a room with two beds and had figured that Nadia would sleep on a cot. Since we couldn't use a cot, I shared a bed with Nadia, Paul shared a bed

with Ian, and we made a makeshift bed for Oliver on the floor that consisted of him sleeping on top of a few extra pillows.

After taking our suitcases to our room on the 18th floor, we changed into swimming suits and headed down to the 5th floor to swim. Unfortunately they had just added a lot of very cold water to the pool. I didn't get in. Nadia lasted the longest. Oliver was very fearful because it said it was 4 feet deep, but actually it was only about 3.5 feet deep as he could stand on his tippy toes, and he's only 46 inches tall. When we swam last night, we were thrilled that the water was warm. All five of us swam. Oliver loved to tell anyone and everyone we encountered on Sunday or Monday that we were going swimming. He invited quite a few people (park rangers, etc) to join us. No one can call him shy! He did a much better job of swimming on Monday. Hopefully the swimming lessons in the near future will help him even more.

Because we had free parking with our hotel, we ended up hoofing it yesterday. We walked more than 8 miles total. First we walked to the US Mint. I was the only one who had been there before. We spent about an hour there and then walked to the Christ Church where George Washington, Betsy Ross, etc. worshiped. England had built the church as an affront to William Penn (who was a Quaker and never worshiped there). Not long after it was changed to an Episcopalian church when they broke apart from the Church of England. The basin of the baptismal dates back to the Middle Ages. Nadia was concerned about the stability of the podium used by the readers. Then we toured the Franklin Museum, Post Office, and Printing Press. We got in free because Nadia is in fourth grade. After lunch at the Reading Terminal Market, we spent three hours at the Franklin Institute (science museum). We stopped and had dinner at an Applebees on our way back to our hotel. The only site that cost us money was the Christ Church (I gave a $10 donation because we received a private guided tour). The US Mint is free for everyone, and we got in free to the other

two locations because of our ASTC membership and the National Park Service program for fourth graders. The kids had their passports stamped for the first time. I gave them their passports at Christmas. I will write more later. It's time to head out to one more museum and an Aquarium before we head back home.