15 days in Pennsylvania Itinerary

One of the country's 13 original founding states, Pennsylvania contains a balance of modern cities and fertile fields. A rich and varied state with a colorful history dating back to colonial times, it remains a worthy holiday destination with its well-preserved 19th-century battle sites and memorial parks. This diverse land is home to pristine forests and rugged mountain regions. For an urban experience, visit the state's university cities, offering numerous tourist attractions as well as thriving music, performance, art, and culinary scenes. The region's Amish country provides a weekend getaway in a picturesque setting of quaint towns surrounded by rolling hills and fertile farmland.

The core of Pennsylvania's famed "Dutch Country" lies in Lancaster County, a compact area in the southeastern portion of the state. The county features a rolling landscape of green fields and gentle hills, interspersed with small towns and Amish farms. Despite its somewhat misleading nickname, the county is not home to Dutch but German-speaking Swiss Anabaptists, who began settling in religiously tolerant Pennsylvania in the early 1700s. Although Lancaster County thrives on tourism and the Amish community is its main attraction, the Amish themselves remain an intensely private people who are not particularly fond of camera-toting visitors. To learn about their hard-working way of life respectfully, take a trip to one of their hardwood furniture showrooms, clustered around the county's main roads.