Tour of Philly

Mary and Judy went on an open air bus tour of Philadelphia today... what? No Reading Market? And here are the sites they saw; yes, they did get off the bus at various locations. I always thought one of these bus tours is a great way to see a city, and I'd never been  bothered about looking like a tourist, because I *am* a tourist and want to see everything.

Mary writes:

Judy bought us tickets for a tour and it was a beautiful day. First, the arch donated by Philadelphia's sister city in China (don't remember the city), Betsy Ross's house, the monument to religious liberty outside the Jewish museum, the Bourse, and this three building optical illusion. All three buildings are the same size.

and here are the photos. Let's see if I can match them up correctly.

This one is easy; this must be the three-building optical illusion.

I'm quite sure this is the Betsy Ross house because I've been there. Although the house history maintains (or at least it did when I was there a number of years ago), supposedly it's American mythology that Betsy sewed the first flag. 

I beliee this is the Bourse Building, which sounded familiar to me, and then way back in my memory I recalled that I used to make a sales call to this building when I sold ad space... an ad agency was located in this building.

This looks like a monument to religous liberty.

And the Chinese arch.

This trip brings up memories of making sales calls in Philly, and I would take the train from NYC and in the Philly Amtrak station there used to be this huge (and I mean huge; football field size) used book store that, if I remember correctly, benefited the library system in Philadelphia. Stacks and stacks and rows and rows of books. You could get lost. And I'd always take a later train and spend time in this bookstore, and the books would be 25 cents and a dollar and I'd come home with a stack. Of course, that closed a long time ago, and I miss it. It's probably some food court now.