Ron and Nikki's Blog: December 2008

Happy Anniversary to us!!

For our third anniversary Nikki and I visited Amish country, or more specifically Lancaster County PA.
We had a great time! Here's a run down of what we did.
DAY 1
-Toured farmland around Lancaster checking out the Amish and their buggies and such.
-checked into our B&B. (Adamstown Inn) CLICK HERE to go to see our room and B&B we stayed at.
-Went to the Black Horse Restaurant for dinner. It was well reviewed at the B&B and they gave us a coupon. CLICK HERE to see the restaurant's website. YUM. The service was great too!

DAY 2
-Went to the Mennonite Information Center. We picked up a few souvenirs and checked out the informative movie on the Mennonites and Amish. Nice Ten thousand Villages there too! CLICK HERE for the website.
-Went to Issac's for lunch. If your in the area you should go to one. they have great sandwhiches and soups. CLICK HERE for Isaac's website.
-Then we went to The Ephrata Cloister. The Cloister was a radical Christian cult led by Conrad Beissel. CLICK HERE to see the website. I think i can sum up their beliefs like this: live your mortal life about as difficult and uncomfortably as possible and you'll spend eternity with God in paradise. I won't go into all the wierd things they believed but I'll say this, a board about a foot and a half wide and 8 feet long served as their bed. A wooden block was their pillow!
-We had dinner at the Shady Maple Smorgasbord. From the outside it looks like an AMC theater or something. I've never seen such a huge restaurant. Food was pretty good though, we gorged outselves! CLICK HERE to see Smograsbord.

DAY 3
-Did some shopping at the Kitchen Kettle Village. CLICK HERE to see the website.
-Went off to Hersey park to see THE GREAT AMERICAN CHOCOLATE TOUR. It was entertaining. It was like chocolate propaganda...but they didn't get me...i bought Jolly Ranchers HA! Nikki got her favorite. Kit Kat. From there we went to Hersey's "Sweet Lights" which is there christmas light display. The first half was ok but the end was cool, we drove on a tiny road up a small mountain with the lights in the woods. Very pretty.
-For dinner we headed to Ephrata to go to Lilly's on Main. A very nice place with great food and excelent service! CLICK HERE to see Lilly's website.

DAY 4
-Checked out of our B&B.
-Went to see the Amish Experience. It's supposed to be a tour of an Amish house and a movie but the house tour was closed. the move, Jacob's Choice was an entertaining if not fairly cheesy movie about a young Amish man's decision to stay with his Amish faith or venture out in the "Real" world. CLICK HERE to see the website.
-Went back to Issacs for lunch
-Went to Cabelas
-Hit TONS of traffic and finally got home.

We had a great time!!