Brandon and I love a day date exploring somewhere new. Give us some good food and cute shops, we’re in. We both had experienced Shady Maple in Lancaster but we wanted to head downtown, do some window shopping and visit some other areas within Amish country. I had received so many recommendations and we checked out a few places that I found online, I’ll share them all here!

We left the house around 8am (on a Saturday) and went straight to Grand Central Bagel to get bagel sandwiches, hash browns and a vanilla iced latte (for me). It was BUSY. Like line wrapped around the whole inside, so I grabbed a seat and Brandon waited in line. Definitely order ahead if you don’t want to wait long and grab a few bagels to take home! Breakfast and coffee were a 10. We then got back in the car and drove about 20 minutes to downtown Lancaster.

Downtown Lancaster / Lancaster City

We easily found parking, but it was pay by meter for a max of 3 hours. We paid for three hours and walked to Central Market which was the cutest. It was farmers market meets terminal market in Philadelphia. We wish we would have brought a cooler because it was filled with fresh meat, cheese, produce and speciality coffee and other beverages. We grabbed an apple cider and then walked to The Troll Market which I stumbled across online while planning our day out. I knew we’d both love it and it didn’t disappoint. It was a midevil themed consignment shop that also has a room you can rent out for events, it was very cool!

We continued to walk around and went into a few antique shops & handmade markets : Space Vintage Modern Warehouse, The Scarlet Willow All Things Vintage, and Building Character A Marketplace of Vintage, Recycled and Handmade- all very close together. We walked to Rachel’s Cafe and Creperie which was highly recommended but we were too full from breakfast to order anything so we snapped this photo on their colorful wall and headed back to the car.

Intercourse

We drove another 20 minutes and explored Kitchen Kettle, a few stops along the way and went to Shady Maple for dinner. It was such a great day and we are looking forward to going back again to explore more soon!

Other recommendations

Restaurants

Scratch Bakes (breakfast or lunch)

Barberet Bistro and Bakery

Lancaster Sweet Shop

Double C. (dinner: tortilla chips and margaritas)