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Travel guide
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
4 days · 8 things to do
Best time to go: May to June and September to October
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Welcome
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in a few days
An hour and a half from Philadelphia, Lancaster County is home to one of the largest Amish communities in the world: families who plough with horses, drive grey buggies and live without mains electricity, among immaculate farms and wooden covered bridges. Around the old town of Lancaster and its 1889 market hall, people come for the countryside, the steam trains and German farmhouse cooking, without forgetting that this is first and foremost a lived-in place, not a show.
- Day by day
- D1 Day 1 2 things
- D2 Day 2 2 things
- D3 Day 3 2 things
- D4 Day 4 2 things
- Worth sorting before you go
- Words that help
- The practical page
- Packing checklist
The trip
Day by day
Map of the sights (numbers follow the suggested order). It prints with the base map.
D1
Day 1
2 things to do · at your own pace
- Morning · Lancaster Central Market free · about 1 hAmerica's oldest continuously operating public market, trading since the 1730s in an 1889 brick hall, where Amish and Mennonite families sell local vegetables, Lebanon bologna, shoofly pies and whoopie pies.
- Afternoon · Lancaster County covered bridges free · half a dayNearly thirty 19th-century covered bridges, more than any other Pennsylvania county, still crossed by buggies, including Hunsecker's Mill, the longest at 55 metres, on a loop of back roads north of Lancaster.
🛏️ Where to sleep · Bird-in-Hand Village Inn & Suites ↗ · All places to stay by budget →€160 a night
D2
Day 2
2 things to do · at your own pace
- Morning · Amish Farm and House · 2 to 4 hA 6-hectare farm presenting Amish life with respect and precision, with an 1805 stone house furnished without electricity, a one-room school, and a minibus tour past working Amish farms.
- Late afternoon · Buggy ride · 30 min to 1 hA horse-drawn buggy ride with an Amish or Mennonite driver on the country roads around Bird-in-Hand, with a longer version that stops at a working farm selling homemade biscuits and jams.
🛏️ Where to sleep · Bird-in-Hand Village Inn & Suites ↗€160 a night
D3
Day 3
2 things to do · at your own pace
- Morning · Bird-in-Hand and Intercourse free · half a dayTwo villages on Route 340 in the heart of Amish Country, lined with bakeries, quilt and furniture shops, where grey buggies roll along the verge and farms sell eggs by the road.
- Late afternoon · Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania · about 2 hThe state railway museum, opposite Strasburg station, keeps more than a hundred historic locomotives and carriages, from 19th-century steam to Pennsylvania Railroad electrics, some of which you can climb aboard.
🛏️ Where to sleep · Bird-in-Hand Village Inn & Suites ↗€160 a night
D4
Day 4
2 things to do · at your own pace
- Morning · Strasburg Rail Road · about 1 hFounded in 1832 and claiming to be America's oldest operating railroad, it runs steam trains with restored wooden carriages on a 45-minute round trip through Amish farms and tobacco fields.
- Afternoon · Ephrata Cloister · about 2 hA religious community founded in 1732 by the mystic Conrad Beissel, whose celibate members slept on wooden benches, with 1740s buildings of narrow corridors and low doors that feel straight out of medieval Germany.
Before you go
Worth sorting before you go
📶 eSIM data
Online the moment you land, no roaming bill.
Get one · Holafly
Online the moment you land, no roaming bill.
Get one · Holafly
🛡️ Travel insurance
Health, luggage, cancellation.
Cover it · Ekta
Health, luggage, cancellation.
Cover it · Ekta
💳 Fee-free card
Pay at the real rate, with no exchange markup.
Open one · Revolut
Pay at the real rate, with no exchange markup.
Open one · Revolut
🚐 Airport transfer
A private car at a fixed price from the moment you land.
Book it · GetTransfer
A private car at a fixed price from the moment you land.
Book it · GetTransfer
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Good to know
Flavours & local habits
🍽️ Worth tasting
- Burgers and barbecue: brisket and ribs cooked low and slow, done differently in every state.
- Clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl: the classic lunch on the San Francisco waterfront.
- Mexican food: tacos from a truck in Los Angeles, a Mission burrito in San Francisco.
- Pancakes and weekend brunch: a national habit, generous to the point of excess.
- Craft beer, and California wine from Napa and Sonoma.
⚠️ Best avoided
- Tipping is not optional: add 15 to 20% in restaurants and bars.
- Prices on menus and in shops exclude sales tax, which is added at the till.
- Do not plan more than four or five hours of driving a day: the distances are larger than they look on the map.
- Never travel without health insurance. A night in hospital can cost thousands of dollars.
- In summer, do not hike down into the Grand Canyon in the heat of the day: the climb back out is where people get into trouble.
Getting by
Words that help
🗣️ English is the main language here, so there is nothing to learn by heart.
The essentials
The practical page
CurrencyUS dollar (USD, $)
BudgetAbout €135 a day, mid-range
Best seasonMay to June and September to October
PlugA/B · 120V
Tap waterSafe to drink
Tipping15 to 20%, expected
Emergency911
EntryUK, Australian and most EU passports need an ESTA, applied for online before departure, for stays of up to 90 days; a few EU countries sit outside the Visa Waiver Program and need a full visa. Canadians need neither, only a passport. Anyone who has been to Cuba since January 2021 cannot use an ESTA and must apply for a visa.
HealthNo vaccination required. Keep tetanus, diphtheria and polio up to date; hepatitis A is worth considering if you eat well off the tourist trail. In the desert parks, the heat is the real risk.
Scan to open this guide online, always up to date.
https://offwegooo.com/en/guides/lancaster-pa
Don't forget
Packing checklist
Have a good trip.
Guide made on offwegooo.com · Photos: Pexels and Wikimedia Commons (Ad Meskens, CC BY-SA 3.0) · Details are indicative, check before you leave.