40 Great Day Trips Near Philadelphia

The grounds are as breathtaking as the art at the bucolic Brandywine Museum of Art, housed in a renovated 1864 gristmill surrounded by wildflower gardens and the meandering Brandywine River. Inside, works by Andrew Wyeth sit beside other beautifully detailed illustrations, paintings and installations along with permanent and rotating exhibitions. Cross the road to visit the N.C. Wyeth House & Studio, the 1922 family home and workspace of Andrew’s father, a National Historic Landmark with Colonial Revival architecture, country furnishings, illustration tools, and many Wyeth relics including a birch-bark canoe and a firearm collection.

Former home to archeologist, anthropologist and ceramist Henry Chapman Mercer, Fonthill Castle is a 115-year-old museum displaying Mercer’s massive collection of prints, books and handcrafted ceramic tiles produced at his historic Tile Works (see above). The collection — including a 2,000-year-old whale oil lamp and cuneiform tablets dating back four millennia — is spread among mansion’s 44 rooms and 32 stairwells. As impressive as the relics, the building features 200 windows, 23 chimneys, and a bevy of turrets and balconies (plus 11 bathrooms!). The castle hosts year-round programming, including summer festivals, fall ghost tours and foodie events.

With over 450 stores and at nearly 3 million square feet, King of Prussia, a Simon Property Mall is the third-largest in America and the premier shopping destination on the East Coast. Together, The Court, The Plaza and The Pavilion welcome around 20 million visitors each year to anchor stores like Nordstrom; shops like Tiffany & Co., Sur La Table, Givenchy and Versace; and 17 dining options for on-the-go eats or sit-down relaxing. Get there via SEPTA’s M line (formerly the Norristown High Speed Line) or grab one of the center’s 13,000 parking spaces.

Are you a LEGO maniac? Then head to the 33,000-square-foot LEGOLAND Discovery Center at Montgomery County’s Plymouth Meeting Mall. Designed for kids 3 to 10, the indoor LEGO playground offers a dozen LEGO-themed rides and attractions (including the Imagination Express and Great LEGO Race Virtual Reality Experience), a 4D cinema, create-your-own build stations, LEGO workshops with master builders and the LEGO Ninjago Training Camp — plus a themed café and LEGO store. Don’t miss Miniland, with huge miniature recreations of Philly’s most iconic buildings and landmarks created from over 1 million LEGO bricks.

One of the last working farms in Delaware County, the year-round fun of Linvilla Orchards offers pick-your-own apples, peaches, berries, corn and more, plus fun-filled festivals and educational programs built around them. Visitors can stop by the open-daily, always-fresh farmers market, or enjoy seasonal events and activities like fall’s Pumpkinland for hayrides and pumpkin carving and Christmas Around the Farm’s chop-down-your-own Christmas tree and a holiday gift market.

At over a thousand acres, Longwood Gardens is Philly’s largest and arguably most famous botanical garden, named No. 1 on Fodor’s list of Best Botanical Gardens Across the United States. Pierre du Pont’s tranquil horticultural oasis showcases nearly 10,000 varieties among its indoor and outdoor grounds. Guests can enjoy permanent exhibits like the Green Wall, Orchid House and Hillside Garden, as well as the seasonal Illuminated Fountain Performances (color-lighted musical dancing water shows at the center of a magnificent five-acre fountain garden) and elaborate installations like the late-winter Orchid Extravaganza, Chrysanthemum Festival and A Longwood Christmas.

Popular Lahaska shopping haven Peddler’s Village welcomes more than 1.6 million visitors a year to enjoy its 70-plus charming colonial-style independent boutiques, specialty shops, wineries and restaurants ringing the storybook-like landscaped grounds connected by winding brick pathways. While browsing through vintage apparel, handmade jewelry, and local art and craft stores, take a moment to stop by the flowing fountains, Zen gardens and historic carousel, and check the village’s calendar for annual festivals celebrating strawberries, blueberries, apples, scarecrows, gingerbread houses and other seasonal events.

Delaware County’s Ridley Creek State Park is a 2,600-acre oasis of wooded trails and rolling hills perfect for nature lovers. Visitors can enjoy hiking and horseback riding trails, a creek stocked with trout, park space for archery and deer hunting, and picnic areas. History buffs can explore the former workers’ cottages, mill dam and historic buildings in the 18th-century milling village known as Sycamore Mills and visit the Colonial Pennsylvania Plantation, the 112-acre Pratt family farm that operated from 1720 to 1820 that’s now a living history site.

We’ll tell you how to get, how to get to Sesame Place, the only Sesame Street-themed amusement park east of California. Fans can meet their furry friends like Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Elmo and many more lovable costumed characters along with experiencing kid-level thrills on 35 rides and water attractions. The 14-acre park also features carnival games, plenty of refreshments and concessions, daily (and nightly) parades, and special festivities like character birthdays and the popular A Very Furry Christmas celebration. Sesame Place is open seasonally from spring through the holiday season.

The difficult 1777-1778 winter the Continental Army spent at at Valley Forge went down as one of the Revolutionary War’s most trying periods. Today, Valley Forge National Historical Park honors those who encamped here with monuments, statues and buildings throughout the grounds, along with replicated huts, General Washington’s original headquarters, the National Memorial Arch, and a recently renovated visitor center that features artifacts and a lifesize statue of the future first President. The 3,500-acre park also includes scenic overlooks, picnic areas, and miles of recreational trails where runners and cyclists can cruise the park.

What is now known as Brandywine Battlefield Park was the site of the longest single-day battle for George Washington and his Continental Army in the entire Revolutionary War. Stop by the visitor venter to explore the on-site museum and exhibition, take a self-guided tour or explore two onsite historic homes: the Benjamin Ring House, a reconstruction of the home that Washington used as battlefield headquarters, and the Gideon Gilpin House where the Marquis de Lafayette stayed before the battle, complete with an 18th-century cookware collection.

The Glencairn Museum in Montgomery County’s Bryn Athyn Historic District is one of the nation’s largest museums dedicated to religious art and history, containing nearly 8,000 works from across ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, medieval Europe and Asia, early Islamic and Indigenous nations, and more. The gallery also features a large collection of Nativity art, including stained-glass windows, sculptures, manuscripts and paintings. Also in the historic district: the 26,000-square-foot Gilded Age-era Cairnwood Estate historic home and gardens, as well as the picturesque Early Gothic-style Swedenborgian Bryn Athyn Cathedral.

Tucked into the expanse of French Creek State Park in rural Chester County, historic Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site is home to 14 now-restored structures that were part of a colonial-era iron-producing village that relied on free labor and the work of enslaved people. Nature lovers enjoy birding and photography opportunities, and visitors can participate in demonstrations of crafts, agriculture and other 19th-century activities.

Bucks County’s Pearl S. Buck International — the early 18th-century Perkasie estate and farmhouse of the Nobel Prize-winning author — is home to a museum featuring a plethora of The Good Earth writer’s personal belongings on display, including the typewriter she used to pen the classic historical fiction novel. Visitors to the site, often referred to as Green Hill Farms, can tour her former home, the stunning gardens and Buck’s nearby gravesite.

Both a preserved historic site and nature area, Washington Crossing Historic Park offers visitors a chance to see where General George Washington and his troops covertly crossed the Delaware River in the dark of Christmas night 1776 on their way to key victories at Trenton and Princeton. The park, open daily, features a bevy of historic sites including Thompson-Neely House & Grist Mill and Bowman’s Hill Tower plus a visitor center, walking paths, picnic pavilions, fishing areas and boat launches. Come back Christmas Day to view the annual reenactment of the famous crossing.

A 60-mile linear park along the Delaware River from Easton to Bristol, Delaware Canal State Park calls to joggers and cyclists, as well as nature enthusiasts who enjoy the wildlife that thrives along the river shoreline and nearly a dozen river islands. There’s plenty of fun on the water, too, as the river and canal the path follows offer ample opportunities for fishing, canoeing and kayaking.

Established in 1972, the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum is a 1,000-acre park just outside Philadelphia International Airport built to protect the largest freshwater tidal marsh in Pennsylvania. The refuge, which lies mostly in Delaware County, is an urban enclave for outdoor recreation featuring 10 miles of low-lying trails for hiking and biking and four-and-a-half miles of tidal creek and boat ramps for canoeing, kayaking and fishing access. Wildlife enthusiasts will enjoy spotting the over 300 varieties of resident and migratory birds, rare plants and numerous land animals, including several endangered species.

Southeastern Pennsylvania’s largest lake — located inside the 5,000-acre Nockamixon State Park — is a great spot for boaters and fishers of all types. Visitors can find more than 25 miles of trails for hiking, biking and horseback riding, picnic sites, and four public launching areas for boats. Park rentals include motorboats, paddleboats and canoes, and the seven-mile-long Lake Nockamixon welcomes fishers of bass, pickerel, catfish and beyond.

Bring your own hammer (no joke!) to Ringing Rocks Park, a seven-acre field of hulking round stones that respond to strategic whacks and thumps with the sound of ringing bells. Climb onto the field and start banging away on the primordial igneous diabase boulders to experience an unexpected and unforgettable melodic geological sound created by a combination of melting permafrost, weathering and rock shape. Once through the boulder field, visitors can continue on into the 123-acre park, a dense forest for hikers, bikers and picnickers which also features High Falls, Bucks County’s highest waterfall.

The Nakashima family incorporates its samurai roots, as well as experiences in construction and art, to its museum-like George Nakashima Woodworkers furniture studio. The grounds double as the family’s private residence, and visitors are welcome by appointment into the showroom, finishing room, chair shop and Conoid Studio. The hand-crafted wood pieces are designed with art and utility in mind.

Pennsylvania impressionist paintings take center stage at the James A. Michener Art Museum, named for the Pulitzer Prize-awarded and Doylestown native writer of classics like Centennial, The Source, Chesapeake and the novel that inspired the Broadway musical South Pacific. The museum, built from a historic 19th-century prison, also features other historical and contemporary works, photography exhibits, a reading room inspired by the sleek woodwork of nearby furniture maker George Nakashima Woodworkers (see above), an outdoor sculpture garden and a terrace built in the original prison yard.

Opened in 2019, the immersive John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove museum and nature facility occupies the site of famed ornithologist and environmentalist John James Audubon’s historic 18th-century home. Visitors can explore galleries and exhibits on conservation and art, an outdoor birdwatching area and an interactive exhibit that allows individuals to experience the earliest stages of a bird’s life from egg to first flight. The center rests beside the existing historic house, barn and nature trails located on the farm where an 18-year-old Audubon lived when he first arrived in America in 1803.

Doylestown’s “working history” TileWorks museum (formerly known as Moravian Pottery and TileWorks) is a National Historic Landmark that continues to create handmade tiles in a manner similar to the method established at founder and ceramicist Henry Chapman Mercer’s workshop that produced hand-crafted ceramic tiles during the American Arts & Crafts Movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. Visitors can tour the site to see original displays and get a glimpse of the production process. Pair a visit with stops at the artist’s Mercer Museum and Fonthill Castle (see below).

Deep in the Chester County woods and atop a mountain adjacent to Valley Forge National Historic Park lived wood sculptor Wharton Esherick, “Dean of American Craftsmen,” whose work can be seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Upon his death in 1970, his magnificent hand-built, 12-acre rural modernist home, farmhouse and studio was turned into the Wharton Esherick Museum, an immersive, interactive National Historic Landmark for Architecture featuring 200 of his pieces including works made in collaboration with Philadelphia architect Louis Kahn. Guided tours are available when scheduled in advance.

Nearly three dozen helicopters, autogiros, convertiplanes and other spiral wing aircraft are on display at the American Helicopter Museum & Education Center. The nation’s premier rotary flight aviation museum features displays including a model helicopter room with over 400 pieces and an exhibit dedicated to the Whirly-Girls, a pioneering group of women helicopter pilots. Several times a year, guests of all ages have a chance to ride in a helicopter for a bird’s-eye-view of the countryside. If you own your own helicopter (!), you can arrive in rotary style utilizing the adjacent helipad, ramp and runway.

The American Treasure Tour in Oaks is the region’s kitschiest museum. The 100,000-square-foot collection features over 1 million pieces of American pop culture memorabilia including neon road signs, self-playing orchestras, life-sized cartoon characters, decades of movie posters, herds of stuffed animals and fleets of antique autos … all accessed via an indoor electric tram. The museum is part of The Factory in Oaks complex, which includes Arnold’s Family Fun Center (think go-karts, laser tag, bumper cars and the like), a trampoline park, a rock climbing gym, a bowling center and more.

The towering castle that houses the Mercer Museum is full of themed rooms dedicated to the tools and crafts of American life before mechanization. Archaeologist, collector and tile maker Henry Chapman Mercer founded the museum in 1916 to display his incredible 40,000-piece collection of pre-industrial tools, early manual technologies and crafts related to American life before mechanization including a whaling boat and a Conestoga wagon. Permanent exhibits include the kid-oriented and interactive Animals on the Loose gallery, as well as shoe- and hat-making stations.

The statue of William Penn atop Philadelphia’s City Hall gazes down toward the city founder’s landing site at Penn Treaty Park. But it was 22 miles north and 20 years later where Penn resided at the turn of the 18th century in his bucolic Pennsbury Manor country estate on the Delaware River he built for his Quaker family. Visitors to the manor, reconstructed in 1939 and the only museum dedicated to Penn, can check out period furnishings, historical objects, an award-winning exhibit about Penn and his legacy, plus hands-on activities and open hearth cooking demos.

Head to Bucks County’s historic Pidcock Creek Valley to unwind among 134 acres of 2,000 native plant species and the wildlife that depend on them. Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve’s grounds span forests, a meadow, hillsides, a creek, two ponds and extensive wetlands. The preserve also offers varied programming for children and adults, including specialty walks like “mornings in the meadow” and forest bathing. Pro tip: View the preserve from above atop the nearby 12-story-tall Bowman’s Hill Tower.

The gardeners at 35-acre Chanticleer pleasure botanical garden are also artists, incorporating wood, metal and stone into the lush landscape. The exquisite locale on the grounds of the century-old Rosengarten manor displays over 5,000 plants across a dozen collections from perennials to agricultural crops, tended by in-house landscape artists who design their own installations. Make time for the Teacup Garden, brimming with tropical plants carefully arranged to create a colorful, sensory experience, and the Minder Ruin Garden, a folly built on the main cottage’s foundation resembling ancient ruins overtaken by the elements, including a 24-foot sarcophagus-shaped reflecting pool.

The 650 acres of Tyler Arboretum’s woodlands, meadows and flora are part of a property that English Quaker Thomas Minshall purchased from William Penn in 1681. With 17 miles of trails, 80-foot-tall trees and delicate wildflowers, it’s one of the region’s oldest and largest public gardens. Adventurers relish solving the seven-ringed Meadow Maze labyrinth, children learn about nature at Discovery Stations, those with decreased vision enjoy the aromatic Fragrant Garden (one of the first designed primarily for people who are blind) and history-lovers can tour several sites on the National Register of Historic Places.

At the 16-acre Elmwood Park Zoo, guests can meet over 100 species, including bison, zebras, jaguars, red pandas, otters and more — including Liana the two-toed sloth, Penny the American alligator and Noah the bald eagle, the mascot of the Philadelphia Eagles. Families can pet the goats, sheep and donkeys in the barn, feed the giant giraffes (ticket required), ride the zoo-themed carousel or zip line 50 feet above the grounds. Adults can picnic with BYO snacks or grab a craft beer at the Zoo Brew Bar & Beer Garden.

You can make Herr’s yours, as the slogan goes, with the tasty Herr’s Snack Factory Tour, a guided firsthand learning experience with a behind-the-scenes look at the production floor and factory warehouse where Herr’s Foods’ beloved pretzels, tortillas, popcorn, cheese curls and potato chips are created and packaged. The one-hour tour also includes fresh warm samples, a visit to the gallery in the gift shop, lunch at Chipper’s Café and a myriad of little-known snack facts. Tours run Monday through Wednesday for both folks with reservations and walk-ins.

Passengers aboard the 150-year-old New Hope Railroad can enjoy narrated train tours of scenic Bucks County on classic rail cars pulled by either a 1925 steam locomotive or one of two diesel engines that date back to the early 1960s. Coast through the county’s hills and valleys past sprawling farms, historic bridges and other countryside features on one of several trips, including the 45-minute standard tour, 21-plus excursions for wine and cocktail lovers, or one of the seasonal holiday trains from Valentine’s to Christmas.

First established in Delaware in 1934, Baldwin’s Book Barn has been offering used, rare, and fine books along with hundreds of manuscripts, maps and prints at the more “recent” West Chester location since 1946. The friendly-family bookstore is located inside a 200-year-old five-story stone barn housing a collection of over 300,000 items packed into every corner, cranny and hideaway. Named one of the World’s Most Beloved Independent Bookstores by Architectural Digest, everything in the bookshop is available for purchase or for leafing through while lounging in a cozy nook or discussing around the wood-burning stove.

Home to more than 135 designer and brand-name factory stores from Coach and Kate Spade to Nike and Swarovski, outdoor shopping plaza Philadelphia Premium Outlets offers 553,000 square feet of deals as big as 70% — all just 35 miles outside of Center City. When all those discounts make you hungry, grab lunch at one of a half-dozen restaurants or the convenient food court — with plenty of outside seating during warmer months.

Pedestrian-friendly Suburban Square in Ardmore is an upscale outdoor shopping plaza that serves as one of the Main Line’s premier retail and dining destinations. Among the nation’s oldest planned shopping centers (and the first with a department store), the square dates back to the late 1920s. Brands like Apple and Free People have set up here, and visitors can also find affordable silver and gemstones at Dandelion, work up a sweat at SoulCycle, and grab a meal at eateries like Lola’s Garden, DanDan or Sweetgreen. The six-square-block development — which is adjacent to Amtrak and SEPTA’s Ardmore Station — also features a daily farmers market.

Take in a show at historic Bucks County Playhouse (founded 1751), a theater on the Delaware River in New Hope that presents both local and touring productions that has seen the likes of Grace Kelly, Dick Van Dyke, Robert Redford, Liza Minnelli and more grace the stage converted from a gristmill in 1939. Since a reboot in 2012, the 500-seat theater has hosted several world premieres and has returned to its roots as an incubator for soon-to-be Broadway hits.

Delaware County’s Hedgerow Theatre, founded in 1923, is a repertory theater and company that has attracted prominent performers to its stage including Keanu Reeves, Paul Robeson and Ann Harding (who purchased and donated the theater to the company in 1931). Hedgerow has also operated as a proving ground for writers like Eugene O’Neill, Langston Hughes and George Bernard Shaw, and features furniture and staircase designs by Wharton Esherick (see above). In addition to general audience productions in the 144-seat playhouse, the “Mother of All Philadelphia Theaters” offers an outdoor children’s theater and innovative sensory-friendly performances.

The Philadelphia Union, the region’s Major League Soccer club, has been thrilling association football fans decked out in navy and gold since 2010 — including capturing the 2020 Supporters’ Shield for the league’s best regular season record, three U.S. Open Cup finals appearances and a run to the MLS championship match in 2022. Beautiful soccer-specific Subaru Park stadium in Chester hosts the Union’s lively home games, led by the friendly-but-rowdy 5,000-member strong Sons of Ben supporters’ group. Bonus: Spectators can enjoy impressive views of the Delaware River and the Commodore Barry Bridge which soars above the site.