We will be visiting Philadelphia in June primarily to tour the historic district. Arriving on a Sun. afternoon and leaving on Tue. morning. Would appreciate suggestions on moderate priced accomodations outside the city and tips on traveling to the district by car. Thanks.

This Philly resident has a better idea: don't take a car there! Drivers are insane, streets are crowded, and parking is both expensive and hard to find. Two ideas will work much better:

1) Park near the Art Museum or the Zoo, then buy an all day pass on the Philly Phlash (private bus company). You can then ride the Phlash around the downtown area all day.

2) Park at the 69th Street Station (Market and 69th Street) for $1 all day (quarters only). Ride the subway into downtown (four tokens for less than five bucks) and then walk around.

In both cases you'll save time, money, and aggravation.

If you want to stay in the city I would check out the Comfort Inn on Delaware Ave (aka Columbus Blvd.). Since it is kind of an out of the way location (although you can walk to Old City) it is probably somewhat cheaper. I live in South Jersey. There is also a new hotel that went up right off route 42-South in Deptford, NJ (unfortunately I can't remember which chain). From there you can go across one of the bridges and be in the city within 20 minutes. The bridge toll though is $3.00 (westbound only). If you want to park, I would suggest a lot along Front St between Chestnut and Market. One that I park in frequently there is $6.00 max all day and only $5.25 if you get in before 9AM and leave before 6PM. Front is equivalent to 1st St so it is easy to walk to the historic area from there. You probably don't want to drive in Center City. It's not that complicated since the streets are mostly in a grid. But the pedestrian traffic on a weekday makes it a real pain. Another parking suggestion for the Old City area (near historic district) is the meter parking on Chestnut St. or Market St. bridges. On Market it is .25 for 15 minutes 4 hours max and on Chestnut it's .25 for 20 minutes 3 hours max. Note meter parking rates and limits are different all over the area so be careful. Those meter people are zealous in their ticketing! On a weekday you will not have any trouble getting parking on the Market St. bridge.

Taking my lead from the previous poster, here's a comment on in-town accomodations, even though that's not what you asked for (so I apologize in advance if what follows is useless for your purposes.) Here's my 2 cents' worth, understanding that I don't know if you're looking outside the city for convenience or price reasons, nor do I know what you mean by "moderate" :

I've used the Comfort Inn several times, it's basic & decent, and a quick walk to the historic district - very near Elfreth's Alley. However for an "inexpensive" place, it's not that cheap - $107/night + $8 parking/night AAA rate (Mem. Day weekend.)

I had good luck this time using Priceline instead. I paid $65/night (incl. $20 for parking) at the Crowne Plaza (much nicer than the Comfort Inn - Priceline considers it a 3 star, & AAA gives it 3 diamonds, for what it's worth.) Don't know if you would get as low a rate on a weeknight, but it might be worth a try.

This hotel is on the bus & subway lines (you could walk to the historic areas, but you probably want to save your feet for the actual tourism) - though if you get a really reasonable room rate you could use your savings to take cabs if you were so inclined. We left the car at the hotel during the day, taking it out to drive to dinner. Nice not having to worry about parking. Saw lots of ticketed cars at expired meters on that Market St. Bridge - on Sunday! Definitely good advice to read the signs carefully.

(Priceline currently offers a $20 bonus if you book using an Am Ex card, which reduced my out-of-pocket for the room alone to $45/night. I think you might have to access the bonus through a special URL. There's also currently a $15 bonus for booking w/o Am Ex. Not sure when these offers expire. I can post more info if you're interested. Obviously there's no guarantee you would get the same hotel as we did, but if you can get a place of that quality in the downtown area at a decent price, it's hard to complain.)

If you do decide to stay in NJ, the motel I was talking about in Deptford is a Fairfield Inn (Marriot). I clocked it this morning on my way into the city. It took me exactly 15 minutes from that exit to the Market St. bridge to park and was 10 miles almost exactly. That was leaving at 9AM. Good Luck in whatever you decide.