My friend Adrienne and I went to Delaware to visit Longwood Gardens, mostly because I really wanted to see the light displays by Bruce Monroe.

Because the gardens are open until 11:00pm, we went to the Delaware Art Museum first.

I was excited to visit because of one of their current exhibits; Tales of Folk and Fairies: The Life and Work of Katharine Pyle.  We also saw her brother Howard Pyle’s work.  I feel like I grew up seeing their work and didn’t even know about it.  I added some of their books to my ‘books to read’ que.

Afterwards, we went to Nemours Mansion and Gardens which was by tour appointment only, we had the 3pm appointment.  The tour part was interesting enough, though our tour guide was a bit tart and rude at times.  I did liked that the tour group was divided up into smaller groups of 4, but I prefer touring locations on my own and that is not an option here.

Afterwards, you can tour the gardens on your own, but only for about 45 minutes which was fairly short since there is a bit of walking and it felt a bit rushed.  The bus guide taking us around the mansion was knowledgeable and had interesting stories.  Overall though, it was worth the tour cost.  They do have gardens only tours, but only once in the morning.

The house was build by Mr. Alfred Dupont for his second wife in hopes that she would love him.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside but were allowed to take pictures outside.  You can see a virtual tour on their website.

Afterwards we went to Longwood Gardens.  I loved this section across from the Italian Gardens with the nook for the door.

There were a lot of great gazebos and archways.

At night, the lights display was beautiful.  The lights on the lake gradually morphed into different colour sections:

This was my favourite piece in the Conservatory, it was like a fountain of stars:

This piece is out in front of the entrance to the gardens, I took a picture when we arrived in the daylight, and then a picture when we left:

We drove to Philly after Longwood Gardens and spent the day there.  We rode on the carousel in Franklin Square:

found the Love statue (which was a lot smaller than we expected), visited the Rocky statue, and walked around looking at the architecture:

We walked around Independence Hall, saw a lot of the churches on our walks, and stayed in a nice area with little shops and eating spots.  It was a fun trip 🙂