Last Saturday we headed down to Philadelphia for some weekend adventures.
Our first stop was finally visiting the Please Touch Museum. It’s a Philly classic in terms of children’s museums. We also discovered when making the plan to head down that it’s now located in Fairmount Park, having moved in 2008 from the location on 21st Street near the Franklin Institute, where I remember it being. The building it’s housed in now is Memorial Hall, the last major building left from the 1876 Centennial Exposition. The move seems to be a good one for museum goers, since there’s tons of free parking, and it was also great for us because it was right near Girard Ave and we also wanted to see the vintage trolleys that had recently returned to service.
Aaron had an absolute blast at the museum. At three years old, basically everything was perfect for him, and I’m sure he could have spent days there if we let him. Adam was a bit more reserved, but once he became comfortable he was able to enjoy some of the exhibits.
As expected, the transit-related exhibits were the most popular for both of them.
Aaron also enjoyed the play kitchen where he could “cook” things retrieved from the little grocery store in the area next to the cooking area. And after lunch Aaron got to enjoy a water area that I basically had to pry him away from once we were ready to move on.
The carousel at the museum was also a delight, Aaron and I rode on it a few times so he could switch animals.
We wrapped up at the museum in the late afternoon, and then drove a bit closer to Girard Ave so we could conclude our day by taking a ride on the Rt 15 trolley. Just like San Francisco, Philadelphia runs a vintage streetcar line, but this one had been shut down since 2020 and underwent a series of refurbishments and repairs. They just returned in June of this year! I’ve visited it before, years ago, but the boys never had the opportunity to ride on it and we wanted to remedy that.
Aaron adorably brought his trolley plushie along for the ride.
I think they enjoyed it, but they also had their eyes on buses and kept asking to take one of them too. So we took the trolley to the Broad Street stop, and took a look at the transit app to see our bus options. We lucked out, and a bus was subbing on the same line and would take us right back to where we parked! So we took Rt 15 back, this time on a bus.
The bus ride concluded our visit to the city, and both boys fell asleep in the car as we drove back home, so we clearly tired them out. A quick stop for dinner on the way home wrapped the day. It’ll probably be our last time down to Philadelphia proper this visit, so I’m glad we were able to experience a full, fun day.