Where In the World Should We Go For Spring Break?
Plus three winter weekend trips from Philly for art, burgers, and a sustainable sleepover.
Happy New Year! (I believe today is the last day we can legally say that, so I made it just under the wire.)
The last two weeks were a blur spent with family — baking, tasting, shopping, wrapping, giving, getting, watching, bowling, pouring, clinking, and then collapsing into a heap. In the midst of it all, a friend asked me if we had made plans for spring break yet, and I also fielded emails and texts from three different people asking for advice on planning a trip to Italy. (Casual sidenote: Saltete currently has two different guides to Rome, and one for Bologna on the way.)
When it comes to family travel, while we don’t usually make a solid plan this far out, I often have some loose idea where we’ll go during their school break in late March. But not this year. So during snippets of downtime I played my favorite game: Explore on Google flights.
For the date range I filled in, I toggled around the world map to see a nonstop flight from PHL to New Orleans for $388, Miami for $239, or Nassau for $2,021 (lol). From EWR we could go to Dublin direct for $557 or Lisbon for $949.
We’ll likely pick a place based on the least pricey (and most painless) flights, or maybe we’ll wing it with a road trip. But in the meantime, I’m plotting out a few weekend jaunts in the coming months to get a change of scenery, including to see an art exhibition in New York, sleep in a green hotel in New Haven, and eat a Pennsylvania Dutch donut in Lancaster.
Take the poll below to share how you chose your last trip, and tell me in the comments where you’re planning to go next. I could use some inspiration.
New York City
In early December, I played hooky for a day and, for $20 round trip, hopped the Amtrak to New York, where I wandered solo around a new-ish permanent exhibition at the NYPL, met two friends for lunch at Raf’s, and made it back — with bags of Levain cookies and Ess-a-Bagels — in time to pick up my girls from school. Next time, we’ll all go to see Henry Taylor: B Side at the Whitney, which I’ve been dying to see, and the Little Island, which I think they’ll love. If we make it in the next couple of weeks, I’ll also try to take them to the Balloon Museum because it looks like pure joy?
New Haven, Connecticut
Anytime we’re driving to New England, we plan a lunch stop in New Haven for pizza (ahem, apizza.) But recently for CNN Travel, I wrote a story about the Hotel Marcel in New Haven and now I want to spend the night. Designed by architect Marcel Breuer, the striking building was the headquarters of a tire company before it was almost torn down to make way for a mall in 2000. Instead, it was bought by architect Bruce Redman Becker and transformed into the country’s greenest hotel. It runs on 100% renewable electricity from solar panels, and even the artwork (made from leftover fabric samples) and the dog treats (made from leftover kitchen scraps) are eco-friendly. While we’re there, we’ll visit Sally’s, Modern, and Pepe’s, for the white clam pie with smoked bacon.
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
I’m throwing a curveball in here. Later this month, we’re visiting friends in the town where I went to college. About two hours from Philly, Carlisle is quaint and quiet, with a main street that I’ve heard is a bit less sleepy than it was when I lived there 20-some years ago. I’ll report back on that front, but on the way home we’ll stop in downtown Lancaster for lunch. The last time we spent a weekend in Amish Country, we spent hours eating our way through the Central Market (the oldest publicly-owned, continuously operating indoor farmers market in the US) and I ate one of the best burgers of my life at Cabalar, a “butchery meets burger spot” that takes advantage of the city’s close proximity to some of PA’s best farms.
Today I learned about Explore on Google Flights. Thanks, Regan!