Vacation - Philadelphia

I've been kind of slow on updating this.  But I've been kind of busy lately and haven't had a whole lot of new information either.  However, we did go on vacation a couple weeks ago to Philadelphia and I have some interesting information to pass on.

First I have to say, we loved Philly (we can call it that because we've been there).  We also went to Hershey and Lancaster County.  If you're considering it and looking for activities to do (or not do), let me know.  I won't post them all here, but it was a great vacation!

I was looking into GF places to eat in Philly before going.  I figured since it was a large city with a diverse population there would be more options than you tend to find around Kansas.  I hadn't had a whole lot of luck until I found a Facebook page called Living Simply Gluten Free Philadelphia.  It's awesome because it has a whole bunch of information about places to go.  Since I only found this website about a week before we left, I decided to email them to find out their best suggestions without having to go through all the information.  And they came through big time!  The creator of the website wanted to know my preferences.  Then she sent me a big list of places based on the budget I told her and our favorite types of food and where we were staying.  It was so great! 

Because of our time constraints, we only got to two places that had GF options.  Most of my meals were hot dogs with no bun which is not exciting or healthy.  The first place we tried was Giorgio On Pine.  It was fantastic!  We had a stuffed portobello appetizer.  I had the gluten free prosciutto and arugula pizza.  My husband took one for the team and had GF spaghetti so that I could try it.  It was good stuff!  The portobello was probably my favorite.  And we had creme brule for dessert.

We also stopped at Sweet Freedom Bakery.  I picked up several items to take along and try.  I had two different cookie sandwiches, a vanilla cupcake, and a samoa cupcake.  My favorite, by far, was the samoa cupcake.

Hershey was, of course, a great place.  I love candy and I can eat almost everything they make.  Can't go wrong there.

Lancaster County was hard.  It's known for it's Amish community so everywhere you go there are homemade pies, breads, whoopie pies, cookies, etc.  I managed to avoid most of it.  I did have a small piece of bread because I wanted to try the fresh butter at one place we stopped.  If you are there, definitely get the Lapp Valley Farm ice cream.  I don't think there are words to describe how amazing this ice cream was!  We had chocolate marshmallow.  If I could have brought it home, I would have!

That's just a quick update.  I guess the best thing I learned is that if you are planning on going somewhere and can find some sort of web page like I did, don't be afraid to ask!  I would never have found Giorgio had I not asked and it was good!