As a New Yorker who lived in Philadelphia and is now a Bostonian, I strongly urge you to spend more time in Philadelphia. I don’t know your preferences, but it’s got some of the best museums, outdoor activities, water activities, historical sites, and quirky activities around. Some personal favorites:
1. The Franklin Institute – not quite as nice as it used to be, but still one of the two best science museums (I’ve been to >40; the other one is the Ontario Science Center in Toronto).
2. Penns Landing – parkland on waterways, historical ship tours, maritime museum
3. Franklin Court – Benjamin Franklin’s home coupled with the first post office, an old time printing shop, and a fabulous underground museum
4. Philadelphia Zoo – oldest zoo in US and one of the nicest
5. University of Pennsylvania Museum – an archaeology and anthropology museum bar none
6. ENIAC – if you’re already at or around Penn, dip into the EE building at 33rd and Walnut to see ENIAC
And a whole bunch more, and even more if you’re willing to go outside the city to nearby places (Longwood Gardens and the Brandywine River Museum, not to mention Brandywine Battlefield Park can, on their own, make a great weekend -and the Hagley Museum just over the border in Delaware is fabulous too).
I second Baltimore – I’ve spent an entire week without leaving the inner harbor, but there are a ton of other cool and interesting things to do too. I’ll focus mainly on the harbor since it’s unlikely you’ll go very far afield if you’re just spending a day or two:
1. National Aquarium – it’s one of the nicer aquariums around, and one of the largest
2. Maryland Science Center – it’s quite nice for a mid-size science museum
3. Baltimore Museum of Industry – right on the water but not in the inner harbor, it’ll make you realize how much short shrift the industry part gets in most science and industry museums (and I say this as someone who’s all about the science)
4. Fort McHenry – not on the harbor, but you can take a ferry from the inner harbor. One of the nicer historical national parks, highly recommend.
5. Almost anything else in the inner harbor (ship tours, Baltimore World Trade Center, etc)
6. McCormick and Schmicks – high end chain seafood restaurant that’s right on the water and has outdoor seating overlooking much of the inner harbor. Good, not great, food but the most relaxing and enjoyable meal.
Let me also put my voice into the group cautioning against doing DC and Boston on the same trip. I would even recommend not foing it if flying, but definitely not by train. I don’t think you understand how awful train travel is in the US. The northeast corridor has the best train service in the US, but that is truly damning with faint praise.
Washington-Baltimore-Philadelphia is fine. Philadelphia-NYC is decent, although it gets backed up and isn’t as nice as it used to be. As soon as you hit New England it’s a disaster. The tracks are ancient and have severe speed limits. The tracks cross a lot of real roads and have traffic jams. It’s a mess. The last time I took the train from Baltimore to Boston it took just over 12 hours. The last time I took it at all it took almost 3 hours from Mystic/New London Connecticut to Boston.
