My husband and I just got back from a trip east--a brief stay in NYC for my birthday dinner and then picked up a car to drive to Gettysburg. The trip to Gettysburg had two purposes--to see the battlefield and to visit antique stores in the area. We spent two nights in NYC, had dinner at Saul in Brooklyn. We used to go to Saul at least twice a year because the food was just so fantastic. Then they moved to the Brooklyn Museum of Art last year and this was our first visit to the new location. The food was still amazing and the manager and staff were so nice--champagne, oysters, and port gratis as a gift for my birthday. That was in addition to the tasting menu.
The trip to Gettysburg was nice, the very beginning of fall color showing on the trees. Some parts of northern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania can compete with anywhere in the world for lush landscape. We stayed at a B&B in Hanover, Pennsylvania. the Sheppard Mansion, one that I would not recommend to anyone. The house is not in very good shape and has a very funny smell. It was also odd that the manager/housekeeper didn't do any room cleaning so after three days our trash cans were full of all sorts of debris including the coffee grinds from the in-room coffee maker. The little town is quite depressing, boarded up stores and obvious signs of economic distress.That sounds terrible but there is still industry in the town--Snyder's of Hanover snack food and several other potato chip manufacturers--but for whatever reason the historic center of town has been allowed to disintegrate.
To top all that off, this was specifically a visit to Gettysburg, about ten miles away, and the B&B had Confederate flags and pictures of Robert E. Lee on display. Of course people always say that Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh separated by Appalachia but my husband and I found the display off-putting. We did enjoy our visits to Gettysburg. We went two days in a row because it would simply be too much to try to see it all in one day. No matter how much one reads about the battle, seeing the terrain makes it more real. We did it all from the museum display to the ranger walk and can highly recommend a visit if US history is an interest.
What would be hard to recommend is the selection of quilts at some of the antique stores in New Oxford. Yes, there were some genuine older quilts on display and for sale, none particularly noteworthy or anything. But there were some new ones mixed in and not marked as new. At first I didn't pay attention but when I started seeing the same fabrics over and over again at multiple stores, then I started looking more closely. It is perfectly all right for a quilter to sell new quilts but when they get mixed together with older ones and without identifying information I have a problem with the store's honesty.
No comments:
Post a Comment