(Philadelphia with Kids – Part 1)
My husband Jason, and I took our 11 year old son and 4 year old daughter to Philadelphia in August. We went with our friend Raymond who lives near there.
My son, Calvin, really wanted to visit the US Mint there to see how they make money. (Mints only make coins and medals not paper money.) That was our first stop. We got to the front door and a guard asked us if we had any cameras – they’re prohibited. Ray’s cell phone had a built in camera, so that counted. The guard said we couldn’t take it in and that there was no place where it could be stored.
Jason graciously said he would take the cell phone and just walk around the area with my daughter, who would be bored inside anyway. So just Raymond, Calvin and I went in.
The mint only offers “self-guided” tours. You basically walk down a long hallway with a window looking down on the area where they make the money. As you move along, you read signs about the history of the US Mint. There are interesting facts about how the money is made and information about the people who are on the coins and medals.
It was disappointing how little you could see what was going on below. We read how they make blanks of each type of coin and then the blanks go into machines that imprint them. It was impressive to see the huge vats of blank pennies.
But, like my son said, “It was good, but you couldn’t get close enough to the coins.”
This article was posted on Sunday, September 25th, 2005 at 4:08 pm and is filed under Philadelphia, Traveling, USA, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
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