New Hope

I've just spent about 24 hours in beautiful New Hope,PA. It's right across the river from New Jersey. You can literally walk there from where I'm staying, The Aaron Burr House. It's a wonderful old victorian built on top of the remains of the colonial era house where Aaron Burr hid out in Pennsylvania when he was wanted for murder in New York and New Jersey. I've never stayed at a bed and breakfast before, but I would recommend this one. The innkeeper, EJ is very friendly and attentive. The room is nice and priced reasonably (about $115 a night). And you get breakfast in the morning! How cool is that? :-) New Hope is a pleasant little town with lots of antique shops, restaurants, and other touristy areas. Curiously enough, Pennsylvania and New Jersey are separated by the Delaware river. Go figure. There's lots of historical stuff to see in the area. Washington bivouacked there during the Revolutionary War with some of his troops and there's a spot down the road called Washington's Crossing. Yes, that Washington's Crossing. Lots of brick buildings from various architectural periods, which makes me happy. It has been cool, but not really cold out. Good spring weather. Oh, and there was that smell at night, which is really hard to describe if you've never lived in a cold weather area before. The air is cold and pregnant with moisture which has almost a sweet odor. I remember it from New England in the spring before the snow had melted away. I haven't smelled that in a long time.

<time passes> Well, Fred is married now. Actually, he was married before, but the "reenactment" is over with. Met his lovely bride Liza at long last, along with a zillion relatives, friends, and hangers on. The men in the wedding party wore kilts, which was kinda funny. The ceremony was nice and of a reasonable length. Met some other mutual friends whom I hadn't seen in a while. Oh! I won a prize, which was funny, because I don't usually think of weddings as places where one wins prizes. Fred wanted to make the wedding a little more fun. So on the back of the wedding invitation was a weird little jumble of characters,

tb gb jjj qbg ibepx qbg pbz fynfu jrqqvat fynfu ebg13 qbg ugzy
Hint: Caesar cipher

which turns out to be rot-13 of the url: http://www.vorck.com/wedding/rot13.html After a little sleuthing I guessed that the solution to the jumble was OHURGH, which of course meant nothing to me. Google cheerfully asked if I meant CHURCH, which seemed plausible (The box for the first letter turns out to be in the wrong place and my guess about the next to last letter was wrong.). After thinking about it and a couple visits to an anagram generator and google I figured out that the next clue was at Saint Andrews Episcopal church at 50 York Street in Lambertsville, NJ. So, before the pre-wedding luncheon (which was delicious, btw), I took a stroll over the bridge to Lambertsville and looked under the sign to find the code word: octothorpe. Turns out I was the first (only?) person to solve the puzzle and take the trip. So I got a gift card to Borders! Woo hoo! Anyway, it was an awesome day. I had a delicious lunch, a nice ramble through two towns, a beautiful wedding, an open wet bar, and a great party afterwards. Good times. Pictures later.