Academy of Natural Sciences

Located in Logan Circle, the Academy of Natural Sciences provides fun for people of all ages. As soon as I walked in the door, I could tell that kids from toddler to teenagers were having a blast. The amount of time you spend here can vary depending on your interests and how much detail you want to see. You can spend only an hour in the museum if you want to quickly go through everything, or you can spend the whole day really diving into every detail the museum has on offer. For $12/adult and $10/child, you really can't go wrong.

For me, the highlight was definitely Dinosaur Hall, where you get to see a 42 foot Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton staring right at you from the entrance. Plenty of other dinosaur bones are on display, including a life-size Stegosaurus that shows the internal anatomy. For children, there are plenty of fun activities in this area such as a scale to see how much you weigh compared to dinosaurs. There is also the Big Dig, which allows kids to literally get on their hands and knees and hunt for dinosaur bones in a sand pit.

Beyond the Dinosaur area, there are exhibits on each continent such as Asia (with the Panda Bears being my favorite), North America (the Moose is huge!) and Africa (featuring a mummy). There are plenty of staff around to help explain anything you'd have more curiousity about as well.

A temporary exhibit that is proving to be quite popular is the Bizarre Beasts: Past and Present which is displaying animals that have very strange looks to them such as a shark with what looks like a circular saw on its mouth. The majority of what is on display is for extinct animals, so it will give you the opportunity to see things you'll never see anywhere else outside of a book.

This museum definitely gets two thumbs up for me and I'd recommend it to anyone in the Philadelphia region.

Logan Square

Located in the heart of the Museum District of Philadelphia, Logan Square's original purpose was to be used as a burial ground.  In later years, it was used as a pasture for various farm animals and then evolved into a place for public executions.  With the construction of the Benjamin Franklin parkway in 1920, it was turned into a widely used traffic circle (which is why it is also referred to as Logan Circle).

At the very center of the square is an enormous fountain called the Swann Memorial Fountain, built in 1924.  The three statues are there to represent Philly's three main waterway: the Delaware River, the Schuykill River and the Wissahickon Creek.

Today you'll also find various people taking a soak in the fountain to cool off in the summer.  Surrounding the fountain are the Franklin Institute, the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, the Academy of Natural Sciences and the Free Library of Philadelphia.