Good news, guys! This is my last Philadelphia post. When I think of Philadelphia, I think of the Liberty Bell, the Declaration House, and our Founding Fathers. It makes sense, when you think about it. Philadelphia used to be the capital of the United States, and so a lot of important historic stuff happened there.
The whole city was littered with random statues and memorials. There were many statues of Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington in particular, including this image of George Washington talking to Ben Franklin.
Unfortunately, the Declaration House was closed to tourism at the point when we happened across it, but we took some pictures from the outside. The Declaration House is where Thomas Jefferson first drafted the Declaration (excluding any drafting he had done within his mind, of course). There were tours at the monument shown in the lower left, but the line was long enough we didn’t go in. While I didn’t go in, I can tell you that it is called Independence Hall.
The lower right was interesting: I thought that when the map said “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” they were talking about the big one, which confused me. After all, as I recall it, that’s in Virginia. Well, it turns out that this Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is designated for Washington’s men from the Revolution. The entire park is a burial ground, with hundreds of bodies interred there. In the same park, there was the Moon Tree, which, as I understand it, was one of 500 trees taken to the moon and back on Apollo XIV when it was just a seed, and is now growing healthily in Philly.
And of course, there’s the Liberty Bell. The monument is part of the National Park Service, and has not only the Bell itself but also tons of information on the history of the Bell, and it’s symbolic purpose over the years. Though it can no longer ring literally, it continues to ring through the spirit of all who read it’s amazing past.
