Philly Museum Trip

I had an awesome, stupendous time in Philly. I went to 7 museums (they said I would probably only be able to see 2-3 in a day, ha!), and I could have seen one more, but I was super tired. All of my pictures are on Flickr (some on FB and MySpace). I'll put just a few highlights of the day here.

First stop, the Philadelphia Museum of Art. these are the steps rocky runs and jumps up and down on. Several people did this reenactment throughout the day. This museum has collections from all over and it's huge. I got lost several times. they have whole room recreations in addition to the paintings and monuments from a place. So you walk in to a Japanese tea house, a Buddhist temple, a French cloister, and Roman garden-house, an English drawing room, monastery library from India, and so much more. They also had an amazing arms and armor collection, but sadly my camera would not take good pictures. A lot of the theme rooms were very dark and atmospheric.

Next stop, hop on a shuttle to the Univ of Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. You enter through this beautiful garden (sadly the fountain was turned off). Proceed to get lost and meander through Egyptian relics from enormous monuments. Find the Etruscan, Roman, Greek rooms. Lots of writing examples so I'm super happy. This museum felt more like rummaging through someone's attic collection of artifacts than the previous recreation of the space where these things would have inhabited, but that's ok.



Next stop, hop on the shuttle to a 3 place stop. The fountain in the middle of the square has sidewalks connecting all these places. First stop, the Franklin institute: awesome pirates exhibit I did not get to see b/c it was super busy and not free, very kid friendly trains/airplane exhibit, planetarium showing on navigation from pirates to spaceships.





Cross the park to the Academy of Natural Sciences. This is just like MOSI with all the kids and hands on activities: someone was making paper! But they also really amazing dioramas (lots of "I bet they come to life at night" comments). The exhibit on Arctic expeditions had all the lights turned off with very poor signage, so I was sad. Plus the library was closed. Boo.

Cross the park again to the Free Library of Philadelphia. This is a real live library so I tried to be as unobtrusive as possible taking pictrues and browsing.



Take the free shuttle again to the Rodin museum, but I was waiting for the other shuttle, so I just took a few quick pictures of the exterior.



On to the Eastern State Penitentiary! I SO want to come back for their Terror Behind the Walls Halloween thing at night. It was super spooky despite the architect's wish to make it all seem very church like and penitence inspiring. It had a weird smell, the paint or age, or something. The ghost cats were lovely. Several artists had setup exhibits to complement the history and structure of the building. And for comparison: Al Capone's cell and a normal inmate's cell. Hmmmm.




Super tired and happy, I ride the shuttle back to the Rodin museum and walk the parkway back to the Penn Museum of Art. I really enjoyed Philly. I would have like to have done more looking around, shopping, eating, browsing, etc., but I wanted to hit as many free museums as possible. I took over 100 pictures with my cell phone, so a digital camera is defintely on my Christmas List :) I always felt safe. Much better than my previous trips to the airport which we passed upon leaving. I also found a vegan recipe for cheesesteaks I shall try (from the Free Library)! Yay Philly. this trip was through the University. They're having another trip to Manhattan to see the Michaelangelo exhibit in November I shall be going on as well. Woot!