lancaster travelogue.

I still haven't told you all about Lancaster last weekend - sorry for the delay! It was a great getaway. It rained almost the entire time but turns out Lancaster isn't a bad place to be in the rain. Here is the long and short of it...

After renting a car at DCA, we hit the road on Friday night - we really just wanted to get north of Baltimore and as far as we could before we had to pull over and find a place to watch Michigan play. Not pictured is the random Chilis bar we ended up at in the middle of Maryland. It was a very close game - I can tell you that the staff at Chilis was not prepared for us to be decked out in maize and blue and to take their t.v. hostage. Michigan won and we were back in the car and in Lancaster by about 11. Not bad! 

We stayed at the Lancaster Arts Hotel - an old tobacco warehouse. It was a great stay. 

On Saturday morning, we woke up and hustled over to the Central Market. The market is in a beautiful 120 year old brick building in the center of town and the market has actually been running for 275 years! The market is fantastic. 

We bought candles and jams. We also bought this great pretzel mix (the plan was to make these for Final Four watching this weekend to watch Michigan but since they lost we are going to have to find another time...)

We also picked up these sweet and hot jam sauces for crackers and cheese...

And of course, we had to try a couple fresh donuts from an Amish bakery....

Our plan had always been to take a long drive through Amish country, so the fact that it was raining, wasn't a real damper on our plans. We jumped in the car and started a very wide, long route....

To save any of you some time if you ever head to Lancaster, there wasn't much of anything to the west of Lancaster to see...so just head east and wander the roads. We stopped in Lititz and went to the Wilbur Chocolate Company. Turns out Ben has family roots in this area (more on this to come) and he was very excited to buy some Wilbur buds. They are little chocolate bites...

On the way out of town, we spotted the Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery. Naturally we stopped to taste test...

Turns out it was founded in 1861 and was the country's first commerical pretzel bakery...

We moved on to Ephrata from here and then swung south to New Holland. Along the way, we passed this great barn....

And the occasional Amish buggy...

New Holland was great for two reasons. The first is that Ben has a lot of family history here. His grandmother was born in New Holland and his mother's family have owned the Country Motor Squire Inn for a long time. Ben has memories of playing behind it on the train tracks (where have the days gone that kids were left to play on the train tracks behind a motor inn?).  So, we stopped in to the Motor Inn and their restaurant to pay homage. Ben ended up making friends with the new owner and talked with him for a while. We took a lot of pictures of the inn, the restaurant and Ben in front of the inn and the restaurant to send to his mom!

There is no connection to Ben's family, but Ben indulged me and let me wander through this great little cemetery in the middle of town while he sat in the car. Have I mentioned lately how much I love cemeteries?! This cemetery was very small and non-descript except for two really cool parts. There must have been a time when they delineated down to the day that the person lived...there were dozens of these types in a row...

And then I found this entire section, I have never seen so many like this before, where the stones are so old that they don't even show the etchings anymore...beautiful though.

As we were driving out of the cemetery, we spotted this thrift store on the corner. We decided to head in...why not, right?!

Oh man, we loved it in here. The place went on room after room. It was a disaster. And by that I mean, a disaster packed with excitement. The amount of crap in there was amazing but we found some total gems. That is going to have to be another post at some point soon - but it was a lot of fun to comb through....

Ben at one point found these old trucks he used to play with as a kid and was thoroughly foused in the toy truck section for at least 5 minutes!

We finally got ourselves back in the car and moved on. By this point, we were getting tired and hungry. Mary doesn't do very well when she isn't fed. We decided to go back to Lancaster to eat a late lunch. But then we entered the town of Intercourse and spotted this barn.

It was a big red barn, so yes, we obviously stopped to go in. We also paid a visit to the Amish wood furniture store next door....and finally got back on the road again. By the time we were in Lancaster, we grabbed lunch at the Prince Street Cafe - great little place - we would recommend it...

After lunch, we realized that we wouldn't be able to get ice cream after dinner, so we had to pop into Carmen & David's Creamery to test it out....fantastic Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough!

At this point we had driven in the car all day and eaten ourselves into oblivion, so we took a nap to reboot and get ready for dinner. We had dinner at john j jeffries. The restaurant convenient also happened to be in our hotel so I had a strong cocktail. All in all, the food was good. Not sure we would tell you to go there for your only dinner in town though....

On Sunday, we woke up and grabbed breakfast at a great little place, On Orange, and we also stopped into the Fractured Prune to try out their made-to-order donuts - a fitting end to our Lancaster excursion!