Hallo amigos!

The day started by saying goodbye to the people who started to become our friends and New York. It was really sad for many of us, because we got so close to each other in this short time. But after some tears and numbers exchanged, we finally got into the bus and headed to Philly. It didn’t take us too long to get there and a lot of people were still tired and they were resting during that time. When we arrived in Philadelphia, we had lunch in a really amazing place called Reading Terminal, where you could get a lot of stuff to eat from countries from all over the world. There was this really cool place in the market where you could walk by and be surrounded by chocolate, cookies, cakes and all kinds of sweet things that we love!

After a while we left and headed to the Constitution Center, where we listened to a really nice presentation about the constitution of the United States. This presentation was full of lights and had a lot of pictures and sounds going on so we could pay more attention than we usually do in our history classes. There was also a room where they have statues of the people who signed the constitution and we took selfies with them! In the same room there was a book where we could sign our names to feel part of the history. In the lobby of the museum you could see the flags of every state on the top of the room.

State flags in the lobby of the Constitution Center

After we spend a while in the museum we met our tour guide, Jen. First she went with us to the liberty bell and explained to us that it’s not only for the US a sign for liberty but for the entire world. The bell has cracked several times (in the same spot) and since it has been in the US most important moments they opened a museum for it. 

Group photo in front of the Liberty Bell

Afterwards we went to the Independence Hall and we listen to what important things happened there. Then, we walked to the outline of a building and we thought it was weird, but then Jen explained to us that they called it the Ghost house. It was the house that belonged to Benjamin Franklin, but his family couldn’t afford to keep it after he died, so they had to bring it down, but architects recreated the outlines of the house, so that you could see where the house was and how big. Benjamin worked in the first post office and invented a machine that would tell him how much money people needed to pay for letters.

Listening to Jen at Independence Hall

Independence Hall

There is a really old church there in Philadelphia called Christ church and after listening to the history of it we walked to Ben Franklin’s grave and threw a penny for good luck.

Next we took the bus tour around Chinatown (fifth largest in the US), city hall and the art museum. We stopped at the art museum to run up the stairs like in the movie “Rocky.” But almost everybody was too tired to run so we just walked up the stairs to have a nice few over Philadelphia.

Beautiful City Hall

Group photo with the Philadelphia skyline

After our short stop at the “Rocky stairs” we headed to South Street to our nice dinner spot at Bridget Foy’s. We all were really hungry and looked forward to finally arriving at our restaurant. The dinner was so delicious and most of us tried the famous Philadelphia cheesesteak. We had an ice cream and then we headed to the bus to go to Washington DC!

-- Karen, Mexico and Mara, Germany