Central Park, Intrepid, and Philadelphia

Today we packed up our stuff from our wonderful hotel(Garden Suites by Affinia) on the Upper East side. We were thinking about doing a bike tour in Central Park, but it was a pretty cold morning(about 35F) and we didn’t get out the door quite fast enough. So instead we walked through the park and climbed on some of the rocks before we and headed towards Columbus Circle, where we caught an Uber to the Intrepid Air Space and Sea Museum. Another fantastic museum that neither Matt and I had been to before. We got to go inside the USS Growler (1 of 2 diesel powered submarine with nuclear missiles), USS Intrepid (aircraft carrier that saw action in WWII and Vietnam), and the USS Enterprise (space shuttle). Plus many many planes and helicopters.

After we saw pretty much everything we could, we caught a Big Bus back to Midtown where we ate a quick lunch and picked up our rental car just off of Columbus Circle. We collected our bags from the hotel and hit the road around 2:15pm. Perfect time, since traffic was not bad. We then bee-lined for Philadelphia to squeeze in a viewing of the Liberty Bell. The monument closes at 5pm with the last people in at 4:55pm. We got into line at 4:30 with a park ranger telling us she couldn’t guarantee we would make it on time. Lily didn’t think we would make it, I reminded her that we have pretty good luck with these type of situations. Sure enough there was about us and maybe 10 more people that made it in on time. Whew! We then took a quick walk around Independence Square and headed back on the road again

We arrived into DC about 8:45pm. Our AirBnB is only 1 mile from the White House and is lovely. I dropped off the rental at Reagan airport and we are now settled in for phase 2 of the trip.