Philadelphia Trip - Part Two

For our second day in Philadelphia, we had three main activities planned:  the Philadelphia Zoo, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park. 

Philadelphia Zoo

I'm sure some people think it's kind of weird to go to a zoo without your kids (and maybe it is), but Daniel and I like zoos a lot and we were excited - we had looked it up before our trip as a possible activity, and found out that it was the first zoo in the United States, so what's not exciting about that? It was actually really nice to be able to walk around at our own pace and not have to worry about little people getting tired/hungry/lost, etc. (not that we didn't keep thinking about them and how much they would love it there.  And maybe we called them a few times to tell them about neat animals we saw).

We didn't have a car, so we took a bus north to the stop nearest the zoo, and then walked the rest of the way (it was the start to another big walking day).

The weather was gorgeous (it was perfect the whole trip) and we had a lot of fun walking around and seeing all the cool animals. 

This little Asiatic bear was so funny - it kept running around the bush really fast, over and over again, stopping in between to show off to all the people watching it.  Plus, it had the craziest hair of any bear I've seen.

I think our favorite animals were the giant otters, though.  They were so fun!  There were about 10-12 in an enclosed swimming area with rocks, waterfalls, and slides, and they were chasing each other all over the place.  They kept wrestling, dunking each other, diving off rocks, etc.  We sat and watched them for a long time.  I have a video clip of some of the otter action that the kids love watching, and I thought about posting it, but then I thought better of it (because unless my blog readers are beween the ages of 1 and 9 it might not be appreciated).  So here's just a little picture of one of the otters swimming and you can just skip right over it if otters are not interesting to you:

Another awesome thing about the Philadelphia Zoo were exhibits like this:

Can you tell those monkeys are all made out of Legos?

It really was amazing.  I thought of Oliver right away, because he is always making up random animals out of Legos.  I guess the zoo has connections with a Lego Artist (I had no idea such a career existed; we found out there are only 9 certified Lego Professionals in the world).  He has made several Lego creations of endangered animals for the zoo.

This polar bear is life-sized and took over 1000 hours to build.  I wonder how many Legos he used.

Here we are after spending about 3 hours walking around the whole zoo. 

Philadelphia Museum of Art

When we were done with the zoo, we walked along the Schuylkill River down to the art museum, which was about 1.5-2 miles away.  This was the view before we started our walk, looking down toward the city:

When we got to the museum we walked out to a little overlook place they had outside:

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is huge!  It took us 3 hours to walk through and see everything, and we were going as fast as we could, and not even stopping to read all of the descriptions or anything (unfortunately, "as fast as we could" by this time was kind of a slow and painful waddle, because we were so sore from all of our walking.  At one point while we were walking through, Daniel started singing "Pioneer children sang as they walked, and walked, and walked" under his breath.  I promise, it was very funny.  We really did enjoy all of the art, but there was also an "endure to the end" feeling to it. 

They had a big Picasso exhibit going on, so we were able to see that while we were there. 

One of our favorite exhibits was one that had tons of authentic Medieval armor and weaponry.  We took lots of pictures to show Tristan and Oliver when we got home - they love drawing knights with crazy weapons and stuff, so this was right up their alley.

Some of the art they had displayed was just crazy.  Our kids could not believe it when we showed them pictures (sorry if this is your favorite style):

Awesome view of the city from outside the museum:

I didn't know before that the Philadelphia Museum of Art is where the Rocky steps are.  They even have his footprints at the top and everything.

Baseball Game

The next thing on our agenda was the Phillies game.  It didn't start until 7:00, but we wanted to get there early for batting practice, and we didn't have anywhere else to be, so we took a taxi straight from the art museum (no more walking for us - it was 30 minutes away on the other side of town).

I love the way baseball fields look.

Here's Daniel eating an authentic Philly cheesesteak (from Tony Luke's, even - another Man v. Food challenge spot!).

We had great seats on the 10th row, and I couldn't believe what a difference it made to be so close to all the action.

Actually, the thing that made the game the most exciting for me is kind of embarrassing to admit; Daniel introduced me to scoring cards!  He had a feeling that would be the kind of thing I would like (I guess after 10+ years he thinks he knows me pretty well), so he bought a program and then explained how to keep track of every play. I had no idea such a fabulous/complex system existed.  I dutifully kept track the whole nine innings (I know, I'm such a nerd!):

As you can see, the Phillies lost, but we weren't too concerned with the outcome, so it was okay.  The game didn't get over until pretty late, so we walked to the subway station and took the subway back to our hotel.

End of day two - we were worn out, but having a great time.