It’s always fun to walk around Peddler’s Village and get some Christmas shopping done. This visit was on a rainy evening, but the wet sidewalks just made the Christmas lights look even more magical. We also walked across the street to check out their annual gingerbread house competition entrees. The judging was already complete but we saw some cool creations. View the photos here.
I’ve seen all of Alton Brown’s previous live shows. So, when he announced he’d be doing a Christmas version of Beyond the Eats in 2022 and one of the stops was Bethlehem, PA, I had to go. Besides, we usually go there for the annual Christkindlmarkt anyway. So, we got a see a really cool show and shopped the market on a slightly rainy day avoiding the crowds. It was a win-win! Check out the photos here.
A few years ago, we went to Easton, PA for their garlic festival and it was a lot of fun. Check that out here. So, when we heard they were having a bacon festival, we knew we wanted to go. We braved the massive crowd and sampled some delicious bacon products. We also watched the hog calling contest (seriously). We might have hung around longer, but the crowds were getting to be a little too much. I’m really glad they had a great turnout, but it made it really hard to walk around.
While in the DC Metro area visiting my cousin, we took a side trip to Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. They were having a “Colonial Market and Fair” which meant there was more going on there than usual. After browsing the market vendors and walking all over the grounds, we took a guided tour of the mansion. Despite being from Philadelphia and having been in many of the buildings where our country was founded, walking through Washington’s home was fascinating and a bit awe inspiring. It portrayed him as a person, not just the mythical history book character who led our country. It also meant walking the same halls he did and seeing his work and living spaces up close. It was easy to imagine what it was like in the 1700’s when George lived there.
Our annual meeting that’s usually in May was moved to February this year. That was a lucky change because it meant that it took place right as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning but was not so bad that we couldn’t travel. As fate would have it, this would be the last trip any of us would take for business or pleasure for quite a while. The meeting was on Coronado Island this year. In our off hours, we enjoyed a lot of delicious Mexican food in San Diego and even found ourselves an incredible Mexican diner for breakfast every morning.
Despite being a week away from having surgery to repair the injured knee, I decided to test my stamina and walk around the Philadelphia Zoo at night during Christmas week of 2019. There were no animals to be seen. Instead, the zoo was alive with lights. They put on a light display called LumiNature. It wasn’t a traditional Christmas light display by any means. It was more like something out of a fever dream with a giant tree make of plastic pink flamingos, talking Christmas trees, a giant polar bear made of car doors and a field of color changing penguins. It also had an educational element to it mostly talking about conservation. For me, it was also nice to get out of the house and experience something new knowing that it would be the last I’d be doing it for a while after my surgery.
In December 2019, when I heard there was a guy in East Greenwich Township that decorated his home to look like Clark Griswold’s house from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, I knew I needed to go see it. On a cold and icy night, we drove down there and I’m glad we did! Besides covering his house with lights, he even had a Ford Taurus station wagon with an uprooted tree on the roof, a period Chicago Police car and Cousin’s Eddie’s RV. The little touches like a mannequin of Cousin Eddie himself, a burned out chair with a fried cat on the bottom and a disc sled with hole in it made us feel like we were in the movie. Oh, and did I mention that Clark himself was hanging from the rain gutter? His neighbors probably hate him for the crowds he draws to their dead-end street, but this guy truly wins Christmas!
Several years ago, when we took a vacation to the Canadian Maritimes, we had to cut Cape Breton off our schedule in Nova Scotia due to time constraints. We decided that Cape Breton deserved an entire trip to see it all, especially the Cabot Trail. This is that trip. In July and August 2019, it was the last major vacation we took before COVID curtailed our travel. Other than a short time in Halifax since that’s where we flew in and out of, we spent the vast majority of our time in cape Breton. It’s such a fascinating place. You almost feel as though you’re no longer in Canada. We experienced Gaelic, Acadian and Mi’kmaq cultures both by visiting museums/cultural centers and by talking to some locals. We also learned a lot about Alexander Graham Bell that isn’t taught in the US such as his huge impact on aviation.
The food in the Maritimes is always incredible and we literally ate lobster every single day of the trip. Some days we had it more than once! It’s also rare that we go back to a city we’ve previously visited, so while we were in Halifax, we hit one of our favorite restaurants and stood in line for Cows Creamery ice cream.
The Grand Canyon has been a bucket list vacation for a long time. In April 2019, we finally made it there. We explored every inch of the south rim and took a helicopter flight over and into the canyon. Of course, while in Arizona, we also visited a number of other places as well. We drove a portion of Historic Route 66 and checked some roadside attractions and the cool little towns that remain along the “mother road.” We also headed into the desert to check out some more little towns, drove into the mountains for a boat ride on a mountain lake and even visited an olive mill. Yes, they grow and press olives into olive oil in the Arizona desert. Before heading home, we spent some time in the Phoenix area visiting the botanical gardens, Scottsdale, Tempe and more. Because our vacations are never dull, we spent the last evening of the trip dealing with a crazy person at the hotel. Now you have incentive click and read on!
I’m not usually one to go on any kind of vacation with no planning, but one Thursday night in February 2019 I found myself booking a hotel reservation (thank goodness for Hilton points!) and packing at midnight to leave for Lancaster County PA on Friday. It would turn out to be one of the most eclectic weekends we’ve had in a long time! We drove directly to a small supermarket to buy a button that would admit us to a chili cook-off (more about that later) and then headed to downtown Lititz for their Fire and Ice Festival. The ice part consisted of 75 ice sculptures lining the streets and 20 or so ice carvers creating more sculptures as we walked around. The fire part of the evening was a fire show set to music over the duck pond in Lititz Springs Park.
On Saturday morning, we went to the local high school for the second fire phase of the festival, the chili cook-off. We tasted 14 chilies made by a variety of local chefs, each supporting a different charity. Some were better than others were. Ironically, the one Lancaster County restaurant entrant that I’m familiar with, Isaac’s, got our votes. I swear I wasn’t biased! After the cook-off, we drove around Lancaster County before enjoying a relaxing dinner at Miller’s Smorgasbord Restaurant. We’d never been there and since we were playing tourist, why not? Besides, the little spoonfuls of chili didn’t exactly fill us up at lunch. Then we headed back to the hotel, relaxed with a cup of coffee and met a scary clown in the lobby. Yes, you read that right! Zeebo, the scary clown. There’s never a dull moment on a Gatti vacation!
On Sunday, we checked out of the hotel and went back to Lititz to a wolf sanctuary. It was a fascinating place. Most of the animals there are actually wolf dogs but have too high a percentage of wolf DNA to be legally kept as pets. There are also some full-blooded wolves. They’re beautiful animals and all very well cared for. Unfortunately, thanks to the ridiculously warm weather we’ve been having, much of the snow melted and we were up to our ankles in mud the entire time. We got cleaned up and did another Lancaster tourist thing we’d never tried before, an Amish buggy tour. That was fun too. Our driver was ex-Amish, so I found it particularly interesting. He didn’t whitewash the story of the Amish. He told it like it is. It was hard to take any photos out of the buggy windows, but we learned a few things. Then we headed out of Lancaster County; stopped at Valley Forge Casino for a little gambling and dinner and then headed home.