Day 2, July 6 Lancaster, PA

Day 2 found us with an entire day in which to explore Lancaster, PA and the surrounding communities.  Since we decided to spend two nights in the area that left a full day of sight seeing.  We divided the day into three parts, spending the morning in the historic downtown section of Lancaster, exploring the town of Intercourse for the afternoon, and visiting a dinner theater in Bird-in-Hand in the evening.  The latter is a little community tucked in between Lancaster and Intercourse.

The picture above is typical of historic downtown Lancaster.  It is filled with shops, cafe's, historic buildings and attractions.  The morning allowed us to explore only a fraction of the gems that popped up around every corner.  Below is the entrance to a collection of antique, art, and junk shops called Building Character.  If your tastes run to the pricey in any category, these abound to.  Other than heat approaching 90 degrees this is a great area to just walk and explore.  I suggest several days.

Of course Lancaster is also a modern city that has numerous chain stores and modern restaurants while throwing in the occasional horse drawn carriage for color.

Here I am outside Good and Plenty, a restaurant that does a fine job of combining Pennsylvania Dutch style foods with traditional American fare.  The diner can choose from eating family style with other guests, or order off a menu.  A gift shop and bakery round out the facility. A fine experience.

Just a few miles off busy streets the region is covered with farms, this time of year high with corn. The farm above was outside Intercourse, as seen from the fire station where I stopped to correct our course after a bad turn.

The region is also home to several shopping villages, park like collections of shops selling clothing, flowers, furniture, gifts, crafts, art and lots more.  Enough of the shops were air conditioned to give us a welcome break from the heat.

We spent an hour or so in a couple of chain stores in which to purchase some gifts and items we forgot to bring along before traveling to our final stop of the day, The Bird-in-Hand Restaurant. This dinner/theater featured a young magician named Brett A Meyers and his beautiful assistants Labrina, Andrea, and Brittany.
Both the food and entertainment were first rate.  Brett and company were thoroughly entertaining and worth booking if you are down this way.  I especially liked that they were working on adding new illusions to their act and most like will be even more fun when you see them.

The bottom line is that we barely scratched the surface of this fascinating region and will be sure to add a couple of extra days to our stay whenever we come through here.  See you along the way.