A Weekend in Lancaster, PA

At the end of January, I tweeted this:

Need a quick, get away from it all weekend in April. Leaving from DC. FL is out b/c of spring break prices. Go! #travel #ttot #lp

— Christina Saull (@MiddleSeatView) January 30, 2013

And one of my 3200 followers tweeted back this:

@middleseatview Lancaster, PA. Stay at the Arts Hotel, check out galleries, Fulton Theater, Central Market, great restaurants!

— Amber DeGrace (@amberdegrace) January 30, 2013

And just like that, I had a weekend planned in a place I had never in a million years dreamed of visiting.

Of course, I was familiar with Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, home to the Pennsylvania Dutch (a sect of Anabaptist – you’re probably most familiar with Amish). But I had all sorts of preconceived notions about “Amish country”: seniors on charter buses, antique shops, miles of buffet lines &, well, not something that we world traveling DINKs did. But I kept an open mind, sent a few more tweets (this shall forever be known as the weekend planned by Twitter!) & last weekend we were off to Lancaster.

Turns out a weekend among the wide open spaces was exactly what I needed.

After a quick drive up from DC Friday evening (it’s about 90 minutes), we checked into the Lancaster Arts Hotel (thanks to Amber’s recommendation!) & headed to Iron Hill Brewery for dinner. Their Ironbound Ale was dynamite, as was the flat bread. The only “downside?” The menu was overwhelmingly huge!

The next morning, while B went out for a few hours on his bike, I borrowed a bike from the hotel & rode up to the Central Market & downtown Lancaster. While strolling around downtown, I met a ton of friendly people – everyone was excited to talk about all that Lancaster has to offer & to put my preconceived notions to rest. After an hour of wandering the market, sucking down a fresh apple cider & grabbing a loaf of Thom’s homemade bread (ingredients? flour, water, salt & yeast), I threw my goodies in my bike’s wicker basket & peddled back to the hotel.

After B returned from his bike ride, we hopped in the car & headed out to the country for lunch. We settled on Oregon Dairy for a traditional Amish lunch. It was all the cliches I had imagined: a huge buffet, a gift shop akin to something you’d see at Cracker Barrel, coupons on the placemats. And you know what? It was fun! The food was homemade, fresh & really quite good. B was thrilled – this is the food he grew up eating in Ohio – & while it was a far cry from how we normally eat, we embraced the kitsch & really enjoyed ourselves.

We spent the afternoon driving around the open spaces of Lancaster County, navigating only by paper map, electronic devices tucked away. We stopped in Litiz to poke around the cute little town & even toured America’s first commercial pretzel bakery  – the bakery that invented hard pretzels. We saw farms, horses, cows, pigs & a few Amish buggies. It felt fresh & freeing & oh so glorious to get out of the confines of the city, just for a few days.

Dinner Saturday night was at John J. Jeffries, a farm-to-table, sustainable restaurant located right at the Lancaster Arts Hotel. Our meal was phenomenal: quinoa, carrot & beet salad; steak tartare; roasted chicken; & an out-of-this-world coffee rubbed lamb leg steak. We celebrated B’s birthday (which was a few days prior & the promoting for the entire trip) in style with a huge piece of chocolate peanut butter cheese cake. It was nothing like what I imagined Lancaster food would be like, more like a fine dining experience in the middle of New York City, but fresher since the farm was literally just down the street.

On our way out of town Sunday, we stopped at the Lancaster Brewing Company for a solid lunch of brewery food & an excellent Hop Hog IPA (so excellent, in fact, that a 6-pack made for the perfect souvenir).

Then, as we were cruising down Route 30 on the way home, I spotted it: the Turkey Hill Experience. For those not from the Midwest: Turkey Hill is an amazing ice-cream-turned-gas-station-purveyor-with-awesome-coffee-&-iced-tea. Their dairy farm, plant & corporate headquarters is in the quaint town of Columbia, Pennsylvania. Turkey Hill Experience is a family friendly attraction, located in an old silk mill. A $10 ticket gets you into several fun, interactive exhibits, including a mechanical cow you can try your hand at milking (I was awful at it, while B the Ohio boy, did excellent), a design your own ice cream flavor, & a tasting room where you can try different types of Turkey Hill ice cream & iced tea (we may have gone back for seconds). It was dorky & kitschy & touristy & we were the only ones that didn’t have children & it was great.

So, Lancaster County, you have won me over. I apologize for just thinking that you were a place for seniors on charter buses (didn’t see a single one), antique shops (stopped at only one & it was charming), miles of buffet lines (the buffet wasn’t actually that huge) &, well, not something that we did (turns out is most definitely could be something we do).