A Day in Scranton, Pennsylvania

By chance, my family ended up in Scranton, Pennsylvania for a day.

Scranton is a bit far from where I live in Baltimore, as it is a three hour trek (without traffic) to even get there. Scranton is by the border of Pennsylvania and western New York, which means for people like us in the lower Mid-Atlantic region, it’s something that isn’t too accessible.

But, lo and behold, my sister graduated from pharmacy school and we had to make the trek all the way to this historical city in order for her to take her board exams.

There were none in the state of Maryland, which is shocking in itself, and the only options were Scranton or Staten Island. We were not driving to New York City, so Scranton it was. I’m currently getting my license, as I was a late bloomer, and my driving instructor actually was from Scranton.

He started laughing when we said that we were going there because there was absolutely nothing, but he also hadn’t been there since 1976.

We didn’t get any recommendations besides that there’s nothing to do. So my mother, sister, and I packed up the car to drive up to Scranton from Baltimore. If you’re driving up from Maryland, we highly recommend stopping at the Shrewsbury markets if you start the route on I-83. Shrewsbury has some of the best Amish markets we’ve ever been to, and their pretzels are some of the best I’ve ever had in my life.

Inside this historical city, we found the best Italian food we’ve ever had.

We arrived at our hotel at 3 pm, checked in, and then immediately headed out to the town center in order to find something to eat. I had picked out a restaurant called Casa Bella, which was twenty minutes away from where we were staying near the airport, so then we got a little peek of what the town center looked like. Expect a lot of classic American style homes with wrap around porches.

There were these beautiful churches everywhere—and when I say everywhere, we were actually impressed at how many churches were around here—and older style American architecture towards where the colleges and universities were. There was also an expressway named after Biden called President Biden Expressway, which we found hilarious.

Then as we headed out of what looked to be the busiest section of town, we then headed through the little side roads to get to the restaurant. I was curious about the sheer amount of immigrant-style places that were around town, as I saw a lot of Slavic, like Lithuanian, places to eat and another Brazilian place right up the road from where we were going. Even at the place we ate at, it seemed like a lot of the workers were immigrants.

So we ate at Casa Bella, which is located a little north of the city center and had glowing reviews when I looked it up. We arrived at 4:20 on a Friday night, right after they opened at 4 pm, and discovered that they were pretty empty. They seated us at a table in the next and delivered our Italian bread and butter to start, which was so soft and fresh.

I ordered the rigatoni with peas, mushrooms, fresh mozzarella, and ragú sauce, my mother ordered the pasta with a garlic sauce that came with clams and shrimp, and my older sister ordered a classic penne vodka. My mother and I swore up and down this was some of the best places we’ve ever eaten at.

The food was high quality, the portions were good, and the service was absolutely impeccable. We left stuffed and not that broke, because the prices were reasonable, and the staff all wished my sister good luck on her test.

We genuinely wished we lived near this place. It was that good. We drove back to the hotel after this, my sister studied, and then we went to bed. I had trouble sleeping, so I honestly didn’t get much sleep.

There was, indeed, nothing to do.

The next day we woke up and it was freezing. This is up north, so we were not expecting it to be this cold, but knew it would be colder than Maryland. It was way too cold for us Southerners and we had to bust out our winter clothes we’d packed just in case.

We ate breakfast at the hotel’s lobby, which was just okay, then my mother and I dropped my sister off at her test. It was six hours, so we headed back to the hotel for a bit, napped, and then left when room service tried to kick us out.

We shopped at the Christmas tree store, and I picked up some new goodies for my kitchen. I’ve been very much into interior design, like I was in college, so I want to remodel some parts of our house while I get the chance. We asked our cashier what there was to do around these parts and she simply laughed and suggested the movies. My mother and I looked at each other, sighed, and accepted our fate.

When we did our research before heading over here, we kind of realized that the only things to do were related to the mining industry, as this was a center of it in the United States, so you could tour a mine, or go to Steamtown, which is a historical era with a bunch of locomotives. It was way too cold to do any of the nature things around, so we decided to look up a plant store.

We discovered a local nursery and as we pulled up, we realized everything was on sale. Being avid gardeners, we grabbed a bunch of different flowers, a basket, and some new vegetables to plant in our garden and only spent $15. The woman at the nursery also recommended some places to eat, but also basically said there was nothing to do.

After that, we sat in the parking lot for an hour, waited for my sister, then headed out to Panera for lunch. Once we ate, we headed home. All in all, it’s a nice place to visit for a day if you want a day trip and live around here, but we didn’t think we’d ever be back unless we were driving to Canada like we used to when I was a kid.

If you are in town, though, go to Casa Bella. Absolutely incredible food and service. My mom literally tipped them higher than 20%—it was that good.