What Happened to October, Part 2?

Here is the rest of this long winded outline of my family road trip around the Northeast...

- Oct 8th & 9th - Boston. We spent 2 days in Boston and it was a really cool city. We walked the Freedom Trail and saw all the famous landmarks in downtown Boston like North Church and the Bunker Hill Monument. Walking around Harvard was a fun experience and we ate lunch in Charlestown at a cool restaurant called Figs. We had dinner in North Boston at another Italian restaurant. Outside the restaurant, Ben Affleck was filiming a movie called "The Town" that is coming out next year. It was interesting watching bank robbers dressed up as nuns driving down the street in a minivan (could be an interesting movie). On day 2 in Boston, we went and toured Fenway Park (which was awesome), went to a great pub across the street from the park, and then went to the Sam Adams Brewery to do some beer tasting. After the brewery tour, we picked up our car at the T station and drove to Vermont.

- Oct 10th - Vermont and Stamford, Connecticut. Vermont was one of my highlights of the trip. We spent most of the day driving around the Southern part of Vermont and pulling over from time to time to take pictures of the fall leaves. Spending the past 4 years in San Diego, I haven't seen many fall colors so this was a little bit of a shock to me. We left Vermont in the mid-afternoon to drive to Stamford, CT where we were spending the night. This was another surprise. Our hotel was cheap and we had one of my favorite meals in downtown Stamford. We went to a French restaurant called Chez Jean Pierre. The food, French wine, and deserts were all great. This was one of the most unexpected quality meals and we all enjoyed the evening.

- Oct 11th - Philadelphia & Lancaster, PA. We left Stamford and headed for Philadelphia and had a great time in the City of Brotherly Love. We got in around lunch and ate lunch at an awesome Cuban restaurant in Old City. Then we drove around downtown, went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (where Rocky runs up the steps), walked around a park on the river, went to Independence Hall, and looked at the Liberty Bell. We left around 4ish and headed back to Lancaster. Central PA was a much different feel for the family than the big cities we had been traveling around. I lost count of the many questions my Dad asked about the farm land. But it was fun to show them where I've been living for the past 5 months.

- Oct 12th - Lancaster, PA. On our last day of the trip. We ate breakfast at my favorite diner, drove around Amish country (for hours), ate lunch in downtown Lancaster, went to Hershey's Chocolate World, and went in to HOPE. Showing my family where I've been working was another one of the highlights of the trip. *The picture to the right is an Amish buggy at a drive through ATM.*

- Oct 13th - Baltimore. My Dad and Sister flew back to CA. I drove straight to work and was completely exhausted from this whirlwind trip through: Maryland, D.C., Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, & Pennsylvania.

My family had been talking about going on a trip like this for years so this was a lot of fun to finally do it. My mom had been to the Northeast before, so it was almost like we were following in her footsteps. Planning has already begun on the Epic East Coast Family Adventure Round II.