Hella

Some friends with a car asked me along for a day trip up to New Hope and back through New Jersey this past Sunday. Having not been out of Philadelphia itself, I was excited to accept the invitation. The day started with an early brunch over on Bainbridge. The service was pitiful and the food wasn’t so tasty but I’m hoping we caught this place on a bad shift. After food, we headed north.

We went along Kelly Drive, then hit Lincoln, and both roads have really nice scenery. I guess I didn’t expect Pennsylvania to be near as scenic as it turned out to be and as we got out on the highway, the tree-lined hills were a great backdrop. A few miles from New Hope, we stopped at a winery in Buckingham and sampled some of the wines they made on site. For $12, I left with two bottles.

A little ways up the road we stopped again where there were some outlet stores and a lot of antiques. I think the place is called Peddler’s Village and there were many visitors. I resisted the urge to get a treat at Dairy Queen (I didn’t realize they had these outside Texas but there’s also one on South St in Philly. However, they don’t seem to have the full menu with the Belt Buster hamburger on it.).

When we arrived in New Hope, we went ahead and crossed the Free Bridge into Lambertville and quickly found parking. It was metered only until 6pm and since it was already 4:30pm, we didn’t have to put in many quarters. We wandered in and out of antique stores for a little while then proceeded back across the bridge to New Hope. We found a local place that serves over 50 flavors of home made ice cream. It was crowded but evidently the line can get much much longer. I opted for one scoop of vanilla fudge and one of Swiss chocolate. It was good but not quite like Amy’s Ice Creams back in Austin.

On the way back to Philadelphia, we decided to stop in Princeton. It was a bit too late to go around the campus but we did have some Thai food right on Nassau. It was a decent dinner but I’m not sure it was traditional Thai food, at least it wasn’t quite what I’m used to. After Thai we headed back to the city and it was cool to see the skyline from a car.

Filed under: Travel