Philly Spring Break With Food, History, and Good Memories

During Spring Break, my husband wasn’t able to take any time off. So instead I spent time with our daughter who is 9 at home doing things locally. On a Saturday, we went to Philadelphia to see Independence Mall. We live in a pre-Revolutionary town here in NJ and we’ve already taken her to Washington’s Crossing and plan on going to the Princeton Battlefield and Trenton Barracks. But the day was nice, albeit a bit cool, so we took the Riverline and PATCO right to Center City.

David and I met in Philly and lived there while dating, so we know the city pretty well. I worked for a time at Quaker Photo on 2nd and Arch St. He went to UARTS for Film on 15th and Broad, that’s where we met, I was on a Mobility Program for Graphic Design and Photography from my Montserrat College of Art in MA. It was fun showing The Kid around this section of “Our City”.

First we took her to lunch at Reading Terminal Market, we forgot that it was crowded with tourists for the weekend. I used to come there all the time. But still, we managed to get a place to eat. I just wanted my chicken kabob plate and Bassetts ice cream 🙂 The two of them had crepes from a French vendor. I packed just my Canon 6D, (this camera body is lighter than my Mark 5D III) and two lenses, the Canon 20mm f2.8 and the Canon 50mm f1.8 in a Think Tank Retrospective bag and other essentials. For Reading Terminal Market I used the 20mm to shoot from the hip for a few and then switched to the 50mm for the remainder of the day pretty much. I rarely use these two pieces of glass, so I thought that day was perfect for them.

We went inside the Visitor’s Center, saw the Liberty Bell and Franklin’s Court. We got off to a bit of a later start than we wanted to that day, but we still had fun. Independence Hall ran out of tickets for the tour. All free except for Franklin’s Court which was just $5. It was great to see everything because the last time we saw it all, it was still decorated from the Bicentennial of 1976 and David used to work for the City of Philadelphia as a Town Crier. He dressed in 18th Century costume and handed out “newspapers” to the tourists in Independence Mall.

We used the Phlash bus which does the tourist stops around the city, $5 I think, for an all day pass. We ate dinner at a nice Italian place near City Hall. Showed her a painted brick wall that was an advertisement for the movie Around The World In 80 Days, and then stopped by our old building to show her where we used to live. Took the PATCO directly from our old building on 15th and Locust to start our journey home.

We actually got our photo taken and it’s somewhat in focused!

Our child is a writer and carries a notebook and pencil everywhere she goes.
Our old apartment, The Vida, 11th floor the bay window closest to The Academy Apartment building on the left, 2nd one down from the top floor.

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