Three States in Three Days: Visiting PA, NJ and NYC

A and I went to Florida to spend Christmas with my family.  Before heading back to Chicago, we made a pit stop in Philadelphia to visit A's sister S and her husband D.

One morning we explored Peddler's Village, a quaint area of stores not too far from S & D's house.

I love all the colonial style buildings!

They had gingerbread houses from a contest on display.  Even the kids' category entries made our own look pathetic!  There's definitely some talented gingerbreaders out there!

National Monument category:

Not sure how "traditional" Jasmine's palace is, but it's so pretty!

One afternoon we went wine-tasting just across the border in New Jersey.  A and I were somewhat skeptical as we'd tried wine-tasting in Florida and were sorely disappointed.  We'd decided we needed to wait until California for a good round.  This was a completely different experience.  This winery - Unionville - has many award-winning wines.

They have vats, the lab and the tasting area inside a huge red barn.

This Chardonnay even won a first place in a European competition - that's impressive!  The wines were delicious!

A's sister convinced her husband to drive us to NYC to see a play - Thank you, D!  First stop: Manganaro's for chicken parmesan sandwiches and zucchini fries of mammoth proportions.

We saw In The Heights.  It was a really great show - made me cry, but overall pretty peppy.  The music was catchy, and we were even lucky enough to have the writer playing the main role!

(Look how much snow NYC got!  We learned later the sanitation workers were slacking at snow removal - it showed.)

The set:

A and I had our hearts set on Ray's pizza, but with the piles of snow and thousands of tourists there for New Year's Eve, we gave up on fighting the crowd and ate a slice from a competitor instead.  (Still better than Chicago's version of thin crust!)  As a consolation, we got rugelach from Katz's Deli - yum!

The morning of our departure, we headed into Philly to see some of the historical sites.  The night before, we looked up the ticket availability for Independence Hall, and there were tons left. However, by the time we got there, all the tours were sold out.  Guess we'll have to go back!

We did get to see the Liberty Bell - my first time!  It's really awesome to stand beside such an important American symbol.  I'll admit it... it made me think of National Treasure.  (I can't imagine I'm the only one...)

Another disappointment - Independence Hall was under construction!  So I couldn't get a tour, or even take a nice photo.

This is the second time this has happened to me.  When I visited Washington, D.C. in 8th grade for a field trip, the Washington Monument was under construction and was not particularly pleasing to look at.  It looked like this:

We had some time left, so A and I walked over to pay a visit to one of America's greatest minds.  I can't believe how many people just walked right by without even noticing!