To do this week: Spend a day at the museum

On the to-do list this week: Hi, Philly explorers. The iffy weather of (almost) spring makes it a great time to plan indoor activities, and we have plenty of ways to spend your time indoors. You can visit one of Philadelphia’s essential museums, a museum outside of the city, or check out a children’s museum with your family.

Also, heads up: we’ll be sending you a new alert email every once in a while to share a relevant story or give you some ways to celebrate an upcoming holiday. Keep an eye out.

On my personal to-do list: I’m picking up some brownies from Second Daughter Baking Co.

📆 Need something to do this weekend or next week? We have an events calendar with 37 things to do in Philly and outside of the city, too. See our full calendar here.

We’ve collected our best Philly tips all in one place here. Stay healthy, stay safe, and get vaccinated.

— Jillian Wilson

Let’s be real, spending hours in a museum with a toddler (or even a teenager) can be a challenge. But, many museums in Philadelphia are designed specifically for kids. You can visit:

We have a full guide to the 17 best museums for kids in Philadelphia, so you can start planning some rain-or-shine spring museum visits.

» Ask us a question through Curious Philly: Inquirer.com/askus

Here is one highlight from our weekly events calendar:

🖼️ Opening of the Museum of Illusions (Museum / in-person / multiday) Like a bigger, sophisticated, selfie-oriented funhouse, Old City’s newest museum opens March 12 with dozens of holograms, rotated realities (including an upside-down rendition of a piece of Elfreth’s Alley), and enough magic eyes to transport observers back to the 90s. Ages 3+. ($20-$22 ages 13 and up, $18-$20 military and senior, $15-$17 ages 5-12, free ages 4 and under, opens March 12, 401 Market St., moiphilly.com)

🔎 Find more of this week’s events, and we even have a kid-friendly events calendar, too.

If you are looking to explore a museum without kids, we have a guide for that, too. And in our guide to the essential Philadelphia museums, we have insider tips from museum staffers — their favorite thing within the collection or a must-visit, oft-overlooked exhibit.

Did you know that there’s a piece of Albert Einstein’s brain on display within the Mütter Museum? Or, have you ever seen the largest sphinx in the Western hemisphere located within the Penn Museum’s collection? Or the giant meteorite on display at the Academy of Natural Sciences?

There are lots of cool things to see within Philadelphia’s grand museums. Here are the 22 best museums in Philly to visit.

Philly may get a lot of the museum fanfare, but there are many, many great museums you can visit within an hour or so of the city. Doylestown in particular is a museum hub with the Bucks County Civil War Museum, Mercer Museum, Fonthill Castle, the Tile Works of Bucks County and the Michener Art Museum. They all have distinct collections, but the 44-room Fonthill Castle is particularly grand — and resembles a European castle.

Beyond Doylestown, you can visit Brandywine Battlefield Park in Chadds Ford, Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College in Collegeville, or Grounds for Sculpture (an outdoor sculpture park) in Hamilton, NJ.

Here’s our guide to 19 essential museums just outside Philadelphia.

There’s an ice cream shop and bakery for dogs (yes, for dogs) opening in Rittenhouse in April. So, in just a few weeks, you’ll be able to treat your pup to a dog-only ice cream cone after a day spent in Rittenhouse Square.

Thanks for reading! We’ll be back next week with more things to do. But in the meantime, here’s something to know:

Last week, my colleague Katie Krzaczek reported that “Philadelphia is the first major U.S. city to ban police stops for low-level traffic offenses, which studies have shown disproportionately affect Black drivers.” And with that ban, eight common traffic violations no longer warrant a police stop in Philly. Here’s what those traffic violations are.