Center City, Philadelphia

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Just about everything your little heart can desire, from parks, monuments, statues & graveyards. Food stands of every type & style all over the area, dollar stores, restaurants from high brow to just plain chow. Clothing, shoes, books electronics & the ever popular Samson Street, home to jewelery merchants displaying their goods for all to see.

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If you like science and your child has a passion for it too the only right place in Philadelphia for you will be the Franklin Institute. This 3 store building with observation platform is huge. You need to come early morning and leave at closing if you want not to miss a thing. You want to plan your day ahead if we talking about this particular Science museum . Check the daily programs sheet, organize your theater shows, demonstrations you wish to see. They have fabulous, most amazing the IMAX and Planetarium .I recommend IMAX everyone I know:4story domed, wrap-around sound screen, something really special!
This year we were blessed with a very rare Tutankhamun exhibition. We experienced the world of boy king Tut, came face to face with his contemporaries, saw ,heard and almost touched his life and short reign influence on history .for people who interested in Howard Carter discovery and lives of pharaohs it’s very valuable experience -50 major pieces directly from his tomb,130 artic rafts,80 objects that were found in graves of other 18th dynasty royal.

The Please Touch Museum has been educating and entertaining Philadelphia’s children since 1976. The museum offers live theater and interactive exhibits for children of all ages, but specifically those in the under-seven crowd.

The Enchanted Colonial Village is the latest addition to the museum’s collection of exhibits. The village is a recreation of the Lit Brothers’ famous department store display, which was a popular place for families to visit during the holiday season in the 1960s and the early ‘70s. The original Village depicted 18 animated scenes of workshops and buildings during Christmastime. This new exhibit includes four recreated scenes and will run from November 26 to December 30.

Other exhibits that run yearlong include Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Children can join the Mad Hatter for a tea party and play croquet with the Queen of Hearts. Move It! gives children the opportunity to learn about real-world transportation. Kids can sit in the driver’s seat of a SEPTA bus and even be the captain of a sailboat on a miniature Delaware River. The museum’s Story Garden is a quiet place where guests can crawl up with a good book to read.

The Sendak exhibit features interactive sets recreated from the books “Where the Wild Things Are” and “In the Night Kitchen” by author/illustrator Maurice Sendak. The child-sized Supermarket is one of the museum’s most popular attractions. Children can fill their shopping carts, stock the shelves, and bake bread, just like adults. For the youngest children, there’s the Barnyard Babies exhibit. Toddlers and even infants can feed the baby chicks and dress a scarecrow in this pint-sized exhibit designed just for them.

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The Academy of natural science can be the place where you can spend the whole weekend day having an adventure of discovery with the whole family-4 floors full of exhibitions. They have a lot of interesting things to explore and do for little ones. My child run away from dinosaurs chasing her- I think it’s a funny 3D thing but its fun, fun, fun!!! She dug in a “BIG DIG” area for dino’s fossils-didn’t find any though! They offer videos and naturalist presentations in the Auditorium, that is rest for feet and exploring the world for kids, on the life animals show they even let kids to touch animals, I believe my daughter touched a big iguana, not sure but it was something like reptile or something scales covered, she enjoyed it though! Live animals corners are interesting too-white fox, loud parrot and the most interesting part-academy is like a shelter for them because they were either rescued by employees or brought because people didn’t wont them anymore! Another interesting thing is the tomb of Petiese, an Egyptian High Prist, complete with mummies, it should have a mummified cat, but I either missed it being blind or they don’t have it anymore. Constructed in 1978, the tomb was recreated with special attention given to drying the plaster walls to prevent moisture from damaging the mummies once they were inside. The tomb is eight feet long, four feet wide and six feet high.
It is the amazing museum, not mentioning the fact that it was found in 1812 and international one. It undertakes research and public education that focus on the environment-that is really appreciate.

945-foot tall One Liberty Place is the tallest building in Philadelphia and the 16th tallest in the USA. Built in 1987, the 61-story One Liberty Place was the first building in Philadelphia to exceed the height of the Billy Penn Statue on the City Hall; before, a 'gentleman's agreement' in Philadelphia stated that no gentlemen would build any structure in Philadelphia taller than the brim of William Penn's hat. Oddly, ever since the construction of One Liberty Place, none of Philadelphia's originally successful professionial sports teams have won a championship; many describe this as the Curse of Billy Penn.

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Right across City Hall, in Penn Square, you'll find Thomas Paine Plaza. Named after the author of "Common Sense", Thomas Paine Plaza is, well, an interesting place. It's got two sculptures - one of Benjamin Franklin the craftsman, the other a tribute to the US Bicentennial in 1976.

What really caught my eye was a tribute to board games. Checkers, Bingo, etc. My one question is: why here?

South of City Hall, you'll find Broad Street, better known as the Avenue of the Arts.
Theaters are everywhere, some spectacular, others charming. and all worth the price of admission. You should definitely check out the Academy of Music (academyofmusic.org), which is the oldest opera house in the United States that is still used for that purpose. I attended a friend's medical school graduation here, in which the former Surgeon General of the U.S., C. Everett Koop was the speaker and I've also been here for an opera. What a grand and beautiful place!!

We stayed in the city center amongst all the skyscrapers that you associate with Philadelphia.
The views from our hotel rooftop were stunning. Philly has some very large buildings, but for some reason it does not feel nearly so clautrophobic as other cities.

Philly is good when it is warm....cheap drink, nice things to see, very artistic place and ver laid back as well.

The best cheese steak stop in philly is called Pat's Steaks and it is on 9th street....must try one while you are there

Center City is the average American city. There is just SO, SO much to do! You can stay for days and nights to just find out and go to anything and everything. From Chinatown to Penns Landing to Liberty Mall to City Hall, there's something for everyone.