Pennsylvania: Hershey’s Chocolate World

Since we were around the ‘hood, we included a trip to Hershey … Hershey, Pennsylvania. Hershey is the home of Hershey. It is also known as “The Sweetest Place on Earth”.

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Hershey, Pennsylvania was not always known as Hershey. It has another name (can’t remember) but was renamed as Hershey when the town became well known for the chocolate it makes.

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Everywhere you go, you see the name Hershey. There is always something named after Hershey, ad nauseum. There are stadiums, library, homes, schools, parks, and what nots all named after Hershey. Even the street lamps are in the form of Hershey Kisses! Some of the street lamps are wrapped Kisses, while some are unwrapped like the one you see above.

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Tourism is as big as chocolates here in Hershey. There were unbelievable number of people who visits Hershey everyday. I am quite surprised. The infrastructure (road, car parks, etc) they have around the Hershey’s Chocolate World rivals that of Disneyland (but of course not as many visitors).

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Our first stop is at the Heyshey’s Chocolate World. (more…)

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Pennsylvania: Gettysburg National Military Park

The name Gettysburg is made famous because of the events of the American Civil War. It is here that the bloodiest battle occurred over 3 days which ended with the victory of the Union army over the Confederates. It was this decisive battle that was the turning point of the Civil War from which the Confederates army were so decimated that they never recovered.

At the end of the battle, that is when President Lincoln visited the grave of the soldiers and delivered the most powerful speech in American history — The Gettysburg Address.

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We started the tour of the Gettysburg National Military Park from the Museum and Visitor Center which is located just off the main town of Gettysburg.

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It is here that my trusted Canon 350D (a.k.a. the Canon Rebel XT) is finally showing signs of dying. I had this camera for three years now and every now and then, up pops the “Err 99” message. It’s not that the camera is unusable but there is no telling when the error will come up and the only way to fix this is to power it off and on — and that works only some of the time. Good thing we had a backup point-and-shoot camera which came in handy. From this point in the series, all shots were from the Panasonic Lumix DMC FX-55 which is not too bad except that sometimes the pictures came up bluish and I do not know how to effectively remove the color cast (see the first picture above … looked unnaturally bluish isn’t it?).

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Anyway, it was here that we started the tour. This is the place where there is a museum, theater and starting point for the battlefield tour.

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There are all sorts of activities … even organized ones for the kids where they dressed them up a Union soldiers and teach them drill. The kids seems to have lots of fun.

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They have a handy brochure that suggests the tours available. We can do the battlefield tour either by bus or we can even have a licensed guide get into our car (for a fee) to lead us through the battlefield. The third option is to get a CD which you play in your car and use a map to navigate.

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We opted for the Special which includes Battlefield Bus Tour and the “A New Birth of Freedom” movie for $29 each. I can’t stand having stuck with someone who I don’t know in the car for 2.5 hours — I mean, what if I don’t like his face or he don’t like my hair or something. (more…)

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