I’ve just returned home from a mini-vacation that included family history research, visits to special places holding a century of family experiences, along with lots of museums, catching up with friends and relatives, and eating good food. Phew! As a result, there has been no blogging and my whirring brain is processing lots of impressions and information.

So, while the next family stories are percolating, here are a few highlights of the places we visited, in no particular order.

Memorial Hall, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

My college thesis was on the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876 and Memorial Hall is the only surviving exhibition building from the extravagant world’s fair celebrating the United States’ 100th anniversary year.

It now houses the Please Touch Museum, and is full of life, inside and out. It’s easy to imagine the hustle and bustle of the fair, displaying the latest and best of America’s arts manufacturing, agriculture and so much more.

There was the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with assorted gems large and small:

And Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library was spectacular, in all its facets:

Not to overdo it on the museums, but…we were bowled over by the Barnes Foundation. Spectacular building and an even more spectacular collection.

Magill Library at Haverford College was a special pleasure. I did lots of family research there and inhaled the place where my grandfather went to college 100 years ago.

More when the percolating is done…