Labor Day in New Hope

On Labor Day we decided to explore New Hope, PA. It's a little historic town right on the Delaware river about 40 miles north of Philadelphia. It was known in colonial days as the half way point between New York City and Philadelphia, so travelers would frequently stay the night here and then ferry over the Delaware in the morning.

The morning started early because Amy wanted to check out this flea market they put on. Luckily we made it out of Rice's Market pretty quickly and got into the historic downtown around 10 am. Our first order of business--find a bathroom. There was a little section of indoor shops right where we parked on the street but as you can see from the picture below they had locking doors on the bathroom that required 25 cents to unlock. I told Amy if they wanted to play that game I would just relieve myself in the hallway and leave them 50 cents for good measure but she did not approve. So we ventured on, unwilling to donate a quarter for the use of the bathroom. Besides, they probably charge for toilet paper inside anyway.

Still looking for a bathroom we found Coryell's Ferry and walked down a narrow pathway between the ice cream store that we wanted to try, which was closed for the holiday, and a private residence. We took a look at their ferry and decided to pass on the ferry in favor of finding a bathroom that didn't charge. (The city was known as Coryell until a fire burned down some mills and they considered the rebuilding effort a "New Hope" for the city) That led us to a canal. Apparently they used to transport boats and up this canal or towpath, which was built in the early 1800's, pulling the boats with donkeys. The canal runs parallel to the Delaware river.
The picture below represents the highlight of the trip--a feeding frenzy of tiger sharks. Ok, I guess they were just fish, but big fish. These fish were bigger than the ducks floating above them. After we saw this cool pond of giant fish I had to feed them. We found a Mexican restaurant that was well-reviewed, it ended up being ok. Hilarie called while we were in there looking for date ideas for her new special friend. After dispensing advice, chomping on some food, and yes, you guessed it, using the bathroom, I grabbed a huge handful of tortilla chips and set out to feed these giant fish. The ducks kept getting in the way, but I crunched up the chips and started tossing the crumbs in and apparently ducks and fish like Mexican food too because they went wild for these chips. It reminded me of wild piranhas in the Amazon on the Discovery channel, right in front of us. Finally Amy got bored and made us leave. After a nice walk around town and some window shopping we got some ice cream at the 2nd best place in town and headed home.