We journeyed down to Philadelphia on Friday to the passport office. We arrived at
8:45 a.m. and the line was already across the front of the building and down a full city block.
Everybody in line was leaving the country within three days and everyone had an 8:30 a.m. appointment. There was some security and a jovial worker came wheeling out a little trolley to have everyone write down their names and birthdays on it.
Luckily, by the time we made it to the front of the line they had already confirmed that all of our paperwork was in fact in Philadelphia and we were asked to return at 2:30. (We had applied for passports on April 1)
The passport office sits next to the historic district. We went to the relatively new Liberty Museum which has an interactive section on tolerance. It also has three Marc Chagall’s in the religion section. We also visited the Ben Franklin museum and watched the short film of his life.
When we returned to the passport office and waited in line on the opposite side of the building I felt a little like I had done standing in line to receive my degrees. That suddenly, at the last moment, someone would pull me out of line and explain that there had been a problem and I needed one more course before I could receive my degree.
Thankfully, we received our passports by 3:30 in the afternoon. As long as you had all of your documents it was relatively painless, and surprisingly organized.
