Philly to New York

Our last day in Philadelphia started with breakfast at Reading Terminal Market

We all got giant, yummy crepes from Profi's Creperie! Yum!

After breakfast, we headed to the United States Mint for a little self guided tour.

Phones and camera aren't allowed inside the mint, so I borrowed a few pictures from the internet.

The lobby of the mint is beautiful, there are 7 of the most gorgeous Tiffany's stained glass mosaics. All the designs of the mosaics are unique to the coin printing process, the ones of Roman children, pictured below, show the ancient Roman coining process. 

for the lobby we went up to the second floor mezzanine, where there is a small museum dedicated to the history of coins and the mint. We quickly walked through, and looked at a few of the artifacts, but we were mainly excited for the factory tour.

The Philadelphia Mint is the largest coin manufacturing facility in the world, it takes up a full city block, and the factory tour runs along that entire block. From 40 feet above, you’ll walk along one side of the plant and then make the return trip from the other side. That’s two blocks of activity.

Throughout this third-floor Gallery, you can look down and see robotic machinery in action. The factory tour is divided into color-coded areas to help identify the coin and medal making process with displays describing everything that’s happening below. Stages include artwork creation, die making, blanking, annealing and upsetting, striking, inspecting and bagging coins. Touchable examples are found along the tour to include plaster models, blanks, master hubs, dies, coins and coin errors. There are also many video and audio touch screen stations that let you dive deeper and watch the coinage process up close.

We had a fun time at the art making stage. There was an interactive activity, where you got to design your very own coin! Mine was cat themed, I got to choose the pictures and words that were on my design, I thought it turned out pretty well, I would use those coins!

This was Thomas' design, he is a big fan of snakes.

I found the Blanking stage pretty amazing. In this department, round blanks are punched our of metal strips using extreme force. The ginormous roll of medal was astounding!

We were 40 feet above the factory looking down on the machinery and the whole coinage process. This tour was super fascinating and so educational, we all loved it!  I wish I could have taken more pictures of our time there, but I understand needing to protect the Mint's processes and privacy.

After our tour of the mint, it was time to say goodbye to Philadelphia and make our way to New York City! We took an Uber to the 30th street station, where we all got whatever sounded good for lunch from the little food court, before boarding our train to New York!

Arriving in New York, we all felt an immediate shift in the feeling the of the city, no other city in the world has the vibe of bustling New York. Philadelphia is a big city, but it felt way more relaxed and slow paced compared to the crowded streets of NY.

All 11 of us, along with all our luggage made our way from the train station to the subway station to catch a subway to Times Square, where our hotel was located.

The subway got us close to our hotel, but there were still a few blocks were we had to navigate the busy maze of people on the sidewalks the rest of the way to the hotel. Which is not fun to do with all your luggage.

We were so excited when we made it to our little oasis of a hotel, the Renaissance at Times Square.

This was my room, I loved the modern decor of this hotel. It was creative and intriguing, yet serene and calming.

The view from my window!

Our first night in New York was dedicated to experiencing Broadway. For most of Karin's family, this was their first time to the big city and thus their first time experiencing a New York Broadway play! So exciting! The Burton family went to see Lion King, which is an extraordinary performance, and they all loved it! 

Mom, Dad and I had all seen Lion King and were wanting to see something different. I suggested Hamilton because it fit in with the theme of the trip and I am obsessed with it. 

The Richard Rodgers Theater is so beautiful and was a wonderful setting to watch this historical story.

It was a magnificent experience seeing this one of a kind production on the famous New York Broadway stage. I especially loved the Aaron Burr, King George and George Washington of this cast, they did a phenomenal performance.