Center City Adventure

When Katie and Todd take the kids out somewhere for an activity like a playground or a special place they call it an adventure. Todd will particularly use the term when he takes Henry out for a walk in the woods while Clara is napping. We used that expression when we all took the train down to center city on Monday.

I wrote about riding the train in a previous post. After we left the train station we walked through Chinatown and at that time we were considering a place in the area to go back to for lunch. We headed for the nice playground in Franklin Square on the edge of Chinatown. I had never been to Franklin Square although I have driven by it many times but there have been many wonderful improvements since I passed through this area.

The kids had a great time and the diversity of the children playing there was amazing. I was impressed with what the city did with this park to make it so welcoming to everyone. There was a couple of grandparents with two children on the train with us and we saw them at this same playground which really must be a destination.

Henry was running around playing on all the swings and things and climbing on everything. Clara was a little more quiet and reserved. A little toddler boy with his grandmother came over to me and Becky while we were sitting on a bench and wanted to interact with us to the delight of his grandmother who told us he had not seen many people because of the pandemic and this was one of his first times being out with other people. He was very cute. After a while Katie and Todd decided to walk across the square to the carousel. So it turned out that Henry didn't want to ride on it but Clara went on it twice. We walked around the fountain with Henry as Clara rode the merry-go-round. She had a blast.

We continued our adventure walking down 6th street passed Christ Church and the grave of Ben Franklin which I had seen many times over the years. It used to be visible from the street through a metal bar section of the wall but that has been bricked over and now they charge $5 to go through the gate and see the grave. We continued down the street passed Independence Hall which had some significant lines and on to Washington Square. We checked out the Bourse Food Hall as a possible lunch spot but it was not inviting to us with the kids pandemically speaking.

We were hungry for lunch and walked past the square to a small take out restaurant Tulula's which was next door to the much fancier but closed at the time Tulula's Garden Restaurant. We would love to go there sometime. Their takeout operation provided us with a wonderful lunch which we took into the park across the street to eat while sitting on benches. Washington Square was a wonderful urban oasis with lots of dog walkers and children playing. We enjoyed our time there.

After the square we headed over to the Reading Terminal Market and walked around in there for awhile before going down the street to the Jefferson Station to take the train back to Mt Airy.