Our walking tour ended with our guide leaving us at Independence Hall & Park- where several very important buildings & structures sit adjacent to the Visitor Center.
Our tour guide left us with a few parting words of wisdom & directions on how to see a few other places on our own.
Loved loved loved all the gorgeous clocks adorning the 250 year old buildings.
Tickets are required to get into Independence Hall itself & we arrived too late to get any that day. Instead, we headed over to Congress Hall since there was a short tour about to start & H wanted to see where George Washington & John Adams were sworn into office.
The tour started off in the House Chamber, which was where the US Congress convened from 1790-1800!
The Senate Chamber was upstairs & much smaller, but this the room where the Bill of Rights was debated & ratified– so freaking cool!
Loved the small little committee room…lots has changed in the last 200+ years.
I was so happy we’d watched the HBO series, John Adams, together (which was amazing by the way!). I appreciated history so much more when we were there & H was in political science history heaven.
Next stop was a quick peek at the liberty bell, which was housed at the end of this building. We had to wait in line, but it moved very quickly.
There’s a barrier around the bell & about 435 other people, but I managed to get a pretty decent shot.
I thought this was a great quote from the National Park Service: The Liberty Bell is the most venerated object in the park, a national icon. It is not as beautiful as some other things that were in Independence Hall in those momentous days two hundred years ago, and it is irreparably damaged. Perhaps that is part of its almost mystical appeal. Like our democracy it is fragile and imperfect, but it has weathered threats, and it has endured.
This was pretty typical of the scene around the bell most of the time- tons of people & lots of cameras. We were FAMISHED & grabbed some lunch before hopping on the trolley/bus for a quick drive around the city.
GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: I rented a SUPER-SWEET-SEXY lens that arrives today- I am going to be a picture taking fool the next 2 weeks
I feel so patriotic after looking at your amazing photographs!