I had fun. The train was timely.
My sisters and I met up on Friday at Philadelphia's train station (they drove, I didn't.). From there we checked in at the hotel and went to the Star Trek and Galileo exhibits.
Both exhibits are at
The Franklin Institute. Galileo is there until Sept. 6th; Star Trek, until the 20th.
The Star Trek exhibit is worth going to. They had lots of the original costumes, a history of the various ships named Enterprise (including the space shuttle and the aircraft carrier), clips of the various shows and movies, lots of props. It was a very well done exhibit exploring the science and science fiction behind Star Trek as well as its ... mythos, for lack of a better word.
It's interesting, a lot of the props that look so cool on the screen look like toys up close.
We had our picture taken on the Transporter Pad and then on the bridge of the Next Generation's bridge. Erin sat in the Captain's chair, Sandy was in the security officer's spot and I was in the counselor's chair.
It was great. I said things like "That ship that's about to fire on us? I sense great hostility from it."
My only complaint? the temperature of the exhibit. It was ungodly warm. I was soaked in sweat by the time we were done.
After a stop in the Star Trek gift shop, we went to the Galileo exhibit. Honestly, it was more of a "Galileo and his sponsors the Medicis" exhibit, but it still was great. It discussed, very briefly, the rise of the Medici family, and the fact that they not only were great patrons of the arts, but of the sciences as well.
I have some minor complaints with the layout of this exhibit: after a while all the compasses and sextants started to blend together... but the documents were neat, as were the multimedia things. Although one of the mutlimedia stations -- the one that detailed the wars between Florence and Siena-- was done completely in Italian with no English translation.
I could read it... I know Spanish and French after all, but it was a bit of a pain and I lost interest.
After that, we were all touristed out for the day. So we went to dinner and
talked smack about family members not there caught up, then made plans for Saturday.
Saturday, we decided we wanted to do a
Ride the Ducks Tour. It was fun: it lasted a little over an hour and we went by many tourist attractions then went into the Delaware River for a while.
Then, we quickly went through the Independence Hall visitor's center -- there was an exhibit there on Philadelphia's role in the Abolition movement and in the Underground Railroad. On our way to lunch, we passed where the Liberty Bell is, but, frankly, I wasn't willing to wait in line for an hour to see a bell.
After lunch, we walked over to
the Constitution Center. That was fun. First, there is a performance piece about the Constitution, then we toured the permanent exhibits in the Center. We also bought tickets for the Napoleon exhibit currently there.
I was amazed at the amount of Napoleon's stuff that was there. I knew that Louis XVIII had much of it destroyed when the Bourbons were restored to power after Waterloo, so I didn't expect so many books, letters and articles of clothing. Yet, there they were.
My favorite piece? Discussing Napoleon's exile on St. Helena after Waterloo, well, St. Helena had a very humid environment, so when Napoleon was gardening, he would where his hair tied up in a scarf in the style of Aunt Jemima. (Josephine, herself a Creole from the French Caribbean, showed him the style.)
A really cool exhibit.
After that, we threw pennies on Ben Franklin's grave and then were, again, all touristed out.
Sunday morning, someone at the hotel pulled a fire alarm. This was the only glitch in an otherwise wonderful weekend.