Trip To TrenTon

    I got the call from my mechanic the other day and as soon as the snow cleared out I hitched a ride home with my roommate.  I picked up my car and left this morning with the intention of checking out the New Jersey State Museum but, when I got there, I found the parking garage was closed. 

    This wasn’t all too bad though; there is plenty to do in Trenton’s Capitol Complex.  If you walk down West State Street you will come across the Thomas Edison State College, the State House, the WWII Memorial, the State Library and the State Museum which now has a planetarium apparently.  Right around the corner from all of this is the Old Barracks Museum, a Masonic Temple and another War Memorial.  I suggest parking in the Hotel and Public Parking garage on South Warren as it is considerably cheaper than the other parking lots and garages I passed: I paid $4 for two hours.

•     The Old Barracks Museum, on the aptly named Barracks Street, is open daily from 10am-5pm.  For the walk-in tours adults will pay $8, seniors and students $6, and kids who are under five get to waltz in free of charge.  If you are traveling in a group of fifteen or more you need to set up a reservation ahead of time by calling 609-396-1776 (the number is a coincidence, I assure you).  The museum offers a number of different group tours that you can look into by visiting their website  http://www.barracks.org/activities/group-tours.html.

 

• The New Jersey State Library is open for the perusal of its collection, which boasts 185,000 non-fiction titles, Monday through Friday from 8:30-5.  It used to be open on Saturdays until budget cuts crept up; it has always been closed on Sundays.  The primary goal for the New Jersey State Library is to provide library resources to the New Jersey State government–which is why it is literally right next to the state house, but they do welcome all of you avid civilian readers.  You can visit their site here at http://www.njstatelib.org/.

 

•  The New Jersey State Museum, which I will definitely get to sometime soon, has a shit ton of things to do and see.  If you check out their website, http://www.state.nj.us/state/museum/index.htm, it is readily apparent you could easily spend an entire day there.

 

• If you are a Freemason, or just intrigued about how much they actually did do establish our country, they offer free tours of their lodge daily.  Visit their sight to find out the times as they are different each day: http://www.mercer50.com/2009_patriots_week.htm (for patriotic fervor, crank the volume on your computer, its hard to hear the music).