supposed to be whale watching...but Philadelphia instead

So, we send Rachel off to the airport and get a call from Cape May, NJ while we're having breakfast that our whale watching tour for the day is being cancelled because of weather moving in.  And the fact that the group of 12 that was supposed to go with us had    
 
 already cancelled because of the chance of storms.  So, we have to change our plans...what to do, what to do on the way to Scranton, PA?  Well, we decided that we would go ahead and go to Philadelphia and see some of the historic sites that John had never gotten to see the last time we were there because he was interviewing for jobs.  We made it downtown and parked at 

 the edge of Washington Square with all the tombs of unknown soldiers from the Revolutionary War, only a block away from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.  We saw the tomb of Benjamin Franklin, got some cheese steak and got out of downtown within two hours...that was very well done if I do say so myself.  We also got a dose of how some of our cities can be quite a draw internationally  as our guide in the old senate house where John Adams and 

 George Washington were both inaugurated had to find the German pamphlet for a couple, and there were many different languages and tour groups there.  Independence Hall and the associated places always make me cry.  I'm not sure why.... pride, overwhelming sense of history, or just incredulity that some colonies made a break from a great empire and actually succeeded... any and all of the above I guess.  It's just a place that always make me feel good about my country.

A couple of extra things were new to me in Philly this time.  They had excavated the first White House and had some of it on display, with an outline of how it would have stood which was interesting to see how we have even lost touch with important things in only a couple

 hundred years, which makes it easier to understand how so much of Europe is sitting under new things that they've built on top of it.  Also, my dad did a history of our family and found that an ancestor on my mother's side was responsible for writing the Declaration of Independence.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not related to Thomas Jefferson...this is the man that actually was responsible for the pretty penmanship on our signed document.  And our guide knew his name and that there is a portrait of him in the Second Bank, which was closed on this day.  Bummer