Wow, per usual, this trip recap series is taking an embarrassingly long amount of time. Current life continues, with teaching, going to see THREE operas, and playing in the pit for Les Miserables at the Muny (very fun!).
St Louis to Manhattan to Brooklyn
We left off on the train from New York to Elizabethtown (via Philadelphia). We arrived at the Elizabethtown train station and my aunt Connie (my mom’s sister) picked us up. We went to her house for lunch–just a few minutes in the car. Her boyfriend Carl (she has a long-time boyfriend just like I do, haha!) met us and we had a nice time catching up and such. I probably hadn’t been to Connie’s house in this millennium but I remembered it a bit still. She’s lived there a long time and has it decorated just how she likes it and it is very neat and tidy. She had some decor out from her recent trip to South Africa.
After lunch we drove to Lititz to pick up my uncle Ed (my mom’s older brother) for a tour of Lititz. Ed loves giving tours, this has always been his favorite thing (it seems) and he has always been incredibly energetic and full of interesting knowledge. In my younger years we went on tours of New York City and Philadelphia with him. Ed is sick, so his physical energy is low, but he was still as eager as ever to tell us the wonders and history of Lititz.
Our first stop was the Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery for a guided tour.
This factory is where the hard pretzel was invented. We got a tour that showed us how they used to make soft pretzels and the story of how Julius invented the hard pretzel. Ed had hoped his granddaughter (hmmm…my first cousin once removed) was working, but she was done for the day and so we missed seeing her.
Carl holding a bag of horse and buggy shaped pretzels. We would have bought some if the bag were smaller, but nobody in our group wanted that many pretzels!
Part of the tour involved shaping your own soft pretzel. Apparently they then used to bake the pretzels and give them to you, but they don’t do that any longer and they just take them away and give you a small bag of hard pretzels at the end.
After the pretzel tour, we went nearby to the Lititz History Museum where Ed works part time as a volunteer guide, and he showed us through the museum and told us all the interesting things. We learned quite a lot about Moravians, who were the big religious group who founded the town of Lititz. This was all somewhat interesting as I’d never really been to Lititz: my mom grew up in nearby Akron and my grandparents lived there until they passed away. Ed and his wife Twila did too, until they moved into a retirement community in Lititz, and Ed has really gotten involved in the town since then.
The Lancaster Symphony was playing a Memorial Day concert in the park that evening, so we got dinner at the restaurant in the park (burgers and such) and walked around a bit more. Ed needed to rest a fair amount, and at one point a storm blew through, which delayed the concert a bit. But they were able to play after all, and the weather was lovely at that point.
After the concert, we took Ed home and then headed back to Elizabethtown (about thirty more minutes drive). We were exhausted by then so went to bed.
The next morning we met Carl again and went to brunch at a nearby restaurant, the Whisk Cafe. We sat outside and enjoyed the weather and delicious food. After lunch we drove to some viewpoints of the Susquehanna river and took a short hike out to Chickie’s Rock.
We went to pick up Ed again after that, and did a driving tour through Amish farm country while Ed told us all about what was being done to preserve the farming way of life in Lancaster County while development was coming in all around…
Ed only had a few hours to spend with us, so after we did some auto touring, we had to leave him again and head back to E-town. We had an early dinner at T. J. Rockwell’s, said our goodbyes, and then caught our train to Philadelphia, right on time. It was really great to see everybody and spend time together, and I’m so glad we made the trip!
Our train to Philly was uneventful, and then Louie’s dad picked us up at the train station and drove us to the hotel we were staying at, the Cambria. It was very nice and we had a corner room with windows on two sides. (His dad didn’t have room for us but treated us to a hotel nearby his apartment.) We checked in and dropped off our things and then went over to visit with his dad and his wife Kiyoko, who had made some delicious fish soup and dessert. We were a little hungry since dinner was so early, so it was nice to eat a little bit and chat. We finally got to bed closer to midnight, probably (very late for this early riser, but I’m getting used to being less of an early riser and enjoying that.)
Okay, I’ll leave it there and write one more post to finish up our trip. I will try to do that in the next few days rather than wait an entire week! Upcoming highlights: the Eastern State Penitentiary and seeing my brother Jesse.