Fourth Festivities

On a hot, steamy Fourth, we took my cousins (2 grandparents, 4 parents, 4 kids, plus us 4) around Center City and wore everyone out in the process. The morning consisted of Rittenhouse Square (where they were staying), Love Park, City Hall, Reading Terminal Market (alas, closed!), Chinatown, National Constitution Center, Franklin Square, and Independence Mall (alas, line for Liberty Bell way too long!). The evening consisted of a picnic in Rittenhouse Square (mmm, cheesesteaks!), a quick look inside the main lobby of the Comcast Center (cool screen!), and then camping out on the Parkway to wait for fireworks.

Alas, I thought I saw that they were to start at 9:30 and then 45 minutes in found out it was 10:30. By 10:45, my two were keeling over, so I scampered them down 17th Street and waited for a bus home. Traffic was disastrous because of so many staking out a spot on one of the Schuylkill River bridges - from 17th to before 30th Street, which is barely a mile, it took over 20 minutes. In other words, we were going slower than you can walk.

Past 30th Street was no cakewalk, either, so by the time we arrived at home, Jada was so asleep she was dead-weight and Aaron's dogs were barking. But soon enough, both were upstairs, in pajamas, and out for the night. Thank goodness today's a holiday; I think we all need a day to just chill. No fireworks to punctuate the day, but still quite a fun time out with the cousins.