Day 5 -- PHILADELPHIA -- Please Touch Museum

After ending our day at Dutch Wonderland (in Lancaster, PA) we drove to our new location -- Philadelphia. We actually stayed across the river in Cherry Hill, NJ. We got to our hotel around 10 pm Monday night. On Tuesday morning, we slept in, took it easy, and recharged our batteries from our 4 previously VERY busy days. Here are the kids in the hotel doing one of their favorite things. . . COLORING.



We had breakfast at the hotel buffet and by 1:00 we were ready to go again. Our first stop???? The chick-fil-a for lunch. Now this may not seem like a big deal to many of you, but to us (who haven't seen a chick-fil-a for 2 years) it was a huge treat!!!!!



Then it was time to cross the Ben Franklin bridge to go from New Jersey to Philadelphia.


For our time in Philadelphia we purchased citypasses. They were a great deal! Our first destination was the Please Touch Museum-- Philadelphia's children's museum.



The Please touch museum is located in the only remaining building from the US Centennial World's Fair (in 1876) in the middle of Fairmont park.



Fairmont park is a large central park in Philadelphia that is 10X the size of New York's central park. The building itself is huge and impressive and very nicely renovated. In the basement they have a whole display dedicated to the centennial world's fair. It was fascinating. We have that fair to thank for introducing the US to such things as bananas, root beer, the light bulb, the typewriter, and the elevator. Also, at the time, construction on the statue of liberty had stalled due to lack of money so they brought the torch and right hand of the statue to the fair and charged people 50 cents to go up to the top.



This museum was by far the most amazing children's museum we have ever been to. We had just watched (on Sunday night) the new Alice and Wonderland so the kids were excited to find one of their exhibits to be a whole Wonderland world.

The rest of the exhibits were really fun. Also, they had displays of classic toys in each room. It was so fun for Trent and I to find all the toys of our generation and show them to the kids. (it did make us feel a little old though!)


So, if you have kids and are going to be in Philadelphia -- this museum is a MUST SEE!

After the museum we headed back to our hotel where we swam and enjoyed their bar-b-q dinner. We headed to bed early so we would be ready for our next BIG day.