Because of the government shutdown, the places maintained by the National Park Service were closed, so I did not get to revisit Benjamin Franklin’s Printing Press, which was one of the things I had been looking forward to.

But it meant that many of the smaller museums were getting more visitors than they might otherwise have, and it freed up some of our time to see some of those places.

In reverse order, we visited:

The Museum for Art in Wood which was interesting, but also now has a good bit of my money spent in its shop.

I didn’t take any pictures (it was a small space and much was behind glass) but I do recommend visiting if you’re in Philadelphia.

Especially the gift shop.

In the middle was the Independence Seaport Museum.

In addition to historical items related to sailing…

…they had a lot of model ships.

I got twitchy just looking at some of them.

And they also had two ships you could tour: Olympia and Becuna.

Becuna is a 1944 WWII era submarine, and I didn’t feel like being that confined, so we didn’t even consider a tour.

But we did go aboard Olympia, which is a nineteenth-century cruiser that went into service in 1895 and served through the first World War.

It was fascinating.

First and foremost was the relative luxury of the officers’ cabins and mess compared to hammocks and single wooden box the rest of the sailors had. But it was also steam-powered, which meant all the apparatus for running a coal engine. And the giant guns which looked to me like cannon but were labeled as rifles.

I didn’t take any pictures, despite the fact for most of the time we were the only people on the ship, mostly because I was ruminating about the ship as we wandered around. And I got a bit melancholy, thinking of all the war she had seen, and the amount of blood that had been spilled on her decks.

Yet, I recommend the tour, especially in the off-season when there aren’t many people.

The first museum we visited was my favorite: The Science History Institute.

It was delightful.

It had a little bit of everything.

I liked the other two museums but loved The Science History Institute.