After a lengthy conversation with my father involving heartfelt pleas mixed with subtle hints about withheld rent checks, I made a hasty train reservation and found myself coming home to spend time with the family this past weekend.

Home is currently an affluent suburb in South Jersey, but I am always quick to remind others that I spent more of my formative years in a different suburb in Pennsylvania, right outside of Philadelphia. What better way to spend a day at home, I thought, than by spending a day in Philly?

I alighted from the local train into the city with my usual travel items: map, notebook, historical guide. This was the first weekend I also had company, my good friend, Jordan Bross.

Bross proved invaluable from the moment we started walking around 16th Street. He needed some winter clothes from J. Crew. The store was part of the Shops at Liberty Place on 16th and Market. Thus was our itinerary.

Philadelphia shares a common bond with Boston. Both are historic cities of great colonial interest that must now balance modern insertions like the Liberty Place skyscraper and the shops entombed on its first floor. I thought it would be fun to walk east along Market Street from Liberty Place, through Center City and into the Old City, arriving at Independence Mall.

This cheeky walk through history might indeed have been fun had it not started to rain. We passed City Hall and were accosted by some of the city’s many homeless people. Seeing that we had little to offer besides Silver Lining’s Best Map of Philadelphia, they let us be and went back to talking to each other.

I wondered, are they all friends? Is there professional courtesy? Even if there is a bond, is there a hierarchy, as with prisons?

“Well, they have something in common.” Bross halted my wandering mind by pointing out the obvious. We continued east in silence along Chestnut Street.

Upon reaching Chestnut and 9th, we detoured along Sansom Street, which runs parallel to Chestnut and is also known as Jeweler’s Row. I pointed out one of the jewelry stores to Bross because some of my distant cousins own it. While I could regale you with a juicy story about the business involving felony charges and family drama, that selfsame family reads this column, so you’ll have to use your imagination.

We continued to 6th Street and arrived at our destination, the Independence National Historical Park. The grandiosely named park encompasses a collection of historic sites from colonial America, most notably Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.

The Liberty Bell is famous for the large crack running through it, as well as for the crackpot who attacked it with a sledgehammer in 2001. In fact, the bell began its storied career with a crack, though it has not always been the same bell.

The first bell was hung on March 10, 1753. The bell was struck to try the sound. Being a sensible object, the bell did not like being struck hard with a clapper. It promptly cracked. It was then melted down and recast. Townspeople detested the new sound. The bell was melted down and recast again. Townspeople were equally displeased with this new bell. It was melted down and recast again, at which point everybody agreed that this new bell sounded no better than the old bell, and now would be a good time to go for a pint at the tavern across the street.

Independence Hall is a study in contrasts. Save for an adoption of a Declaration of Independence here and a signing of a U.S. Constitution there, the hall is downright boring in comparison to the tumult of the history of the Liberty Bell.

Bross and I didn’t get to see either of these attractions up close, however. Philadelphia has added considerable security measures to Independence Mall since all those school trips I used to take there.

The most effective measure the city has adopted is the contracting of Wackenhut security officers to organize the flow of tourists into a single secured entrance for the entire park area.

The Wackenhut guards are not effective because they are qualified; they are effective because they skillfully combine the organizational know-how of lemmings with the intelligence of a shiny rock confounded by figuring out how to enter Independence Mall, so that would-be terrorists eventually give up and go home. And really, I don’t mean to insult lemmings or shiny rocks; Wackenhut guards are worse than both.

We were herded from corner to corner, given little explanation or information other than “You can’t walk past this corner. Go to that corner.” Finally, we realized there was a single security entrance to see any part of the expansive mall. In addition to this madness, Independence Hall required a separate ticket, which was free but needed to be obtained at a visitor’s center across the street from the security entrance.

We decided to bid a vocal farewell to Independence Mall and the fine officers of Wackenhut. I don’t remember verbatim what I said, but it involved farm animals, toilet plungers and security guards’ dead mothers.

And through it all, the rain continued. I looked at Bross. He looked at me. I looked at the map. Then we found the nearest train station, and soon we were both looking at Philadelphia from a train window as we rode back over the Delaware River, back into New Jersey and back home.