Parent's Trip to Philadelphia

This trip was to Philadelphia for the day and I learned about places in Philadelphia I never knew existed and that's strange because I lived in Reading for 8 years and for some reason never visited many of the cultural places of interests that Philadelphia had to offer. About the only places I remember visiting on several occasions over my lifetime were Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell but Philadelphia has so much more to offer as I was to discover.

Our first stop was the Philadelphia Museum of Art made famous by the Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky film, his statue is still in the front of the museum off to the right side.

I have to think of all those years I lived in Reading and traveled the 50 miles to Philly along the Schuylkill River and looked at the Museum of Art up on the hill and never once visited the place. I also remember the skull racing in the Schuylkill River below the museum. I remember Pennsylvanians nicknamed the Schuylkill River the "Skully" and the Tulpehocken Creek in Reading that flowed into the Schuylkill was the "Tully", I remember swimming in both in my youth.

The day of our visit we visited the museum and had lunch there plus we visited three of the old homes in Fairmount Park which is the large park that is situated on the hills above and along the northeast side of the Schuylkill River. There are 7 historic homes in Fairmount Park: Strawberry Mansion, Cedar Grove, Sweetbriar, Lemon Hill, Mount Pleasant, Laurel Hill, and Woodford. We only had time to visit three: Cedar Grove, Lemon Hill and Woodford but hopefully one day we'll return and be able to see the others.

Even though we were unable to visit the remaining 4 mansions we passed by them and in some cases were able to take photos. Another note of interest was the numerous statues placed along the river near the boat houses, the number of these statues was really impressive.

Thank you Dad for including my most favorite sculpture!