Today I got a bottom-to-top, including rooftop, tour of this 1910 flatiron building in Bethlehem PA that would have been pretty cool just from an architectural perspective. (Hey! It’s a triangle, not a rectangle!) But the coolest thing about today’s New Place was meeting the people who work here. Today’s tour was pretty much of…
Set up on a knoll above Hamburg, beneath spreading old trees, and behind an indecisive stone wall, St. John’s Lutheran Cemetery is a place many of the living (like me) just drive by. Today, desperate for a close-by new place, I decided to visit. Designated a Berks County Historical Site, the most interesting part of…
Sometimes you just have to turn right! I have driven by Deer Lake, a small town with a lake (and probably deer, although I didn’t see any) innumerable times in my life. It’s just four miles north of my hometown, after all. But I never turned right off the highway and explored the town or…
Continuing my ice cream series here at One New Place with this “Sweet” place. This little shop has been in my hometown at least 10 years. Can’t imagine why I never stopped there before? Probably because I was used to going to the same ol’ ice cream shops. Now that the “ice” is broken, I…
I got lost, and look what I found: This beautiful Art-Deco theater! It’s an operating theater, opened in 1928 and part of the Civic Theater in Allentown. Dig the elephant head sculptures, with curving trunks, on the corners! Actually, I discovered the whole “West End Theater District” in Allentown. I didn’t even know there was…
Like that old cliché, today’s New Place was definitely more about the journey (a long, slow climb up a mountain on gravel road, just following my nose, driving straight into the clouds and listening to my ears pop), than the destination (a fenced-off old fire tower with no view, where I was the main course…
Only in the Peeps factory could you overhear a conversation that begins “On the marshmallow floor, conveyor belt 4…” Apparently, some vendors there wanted candy. We all want candy. It’s all sunshine and candy from the moment you turn into the parking lot of “Just Born” (the company who manufactures Peeps, named after the last name…
Just a pretty little country lane today. It took me a while to find a New Place tonight, as I was in a neck of the woods I know very well (Shoemakersville, PA), but eventually, after two passes up and down the road, a stop for ice cream, and a peek at the map, I…
I love this One New Place project! Especially when I have no idea where to go or what to look for, and then decide just to drive in the opposite direction from the one I usually drive, and then stumble on surprises like this . . . West Park, a beautiful 19th-century semi-formal park, the…
Did not take a ride on the Reading today. Did not pass Go. Did not collect $200. Nope, no ride. The trains at this museum here in Hamburg, PA, are permanently parked. But we did get a tour that took us off the Monopoly board and into the yard to see the large variety of engines…