BETHLEHEM, Pa. – The countdown to America’s 250th birthday is serving up a side of time travel.<\/p>\n
The Historic Hotel Bethlehem was completely sold-out Thursday for a revolutionary dining experience where the year is officially 1776.<\/p>\n
“I am a soldier of His Majesty’s 43rd Regiment of Foot. And you are some sort of continental regular…”<\/p>\n
“Oh posh. I am a member of the 2nd Pennsylvania Battalion.”<\/p>\n
Step off the elevator at the Historic Hotel Bethlehem and directly into a time machine to 1776. Historic Hotel Bethlehem & Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites partnered together for the interactive ‘Liberty and Lanterns’ event.<\/p>\n
“We have like a real time travel experience planned for everyone tonight. After their welcome cider because it wasn’t safe to drink the WATER in the 18th century, you go upstairs to a colonial tavern atmosphere,” said Beth Beatty, special events manager with Historic Bethlehem Museums and Sites.<\/p>\n
That tavern atmosphere includes authentic 18th century games and beverages, with bitter wartime enemies rubbing elbows before dinner.<\/p>\n
“So, like my colleague here has said, we put aside our differences for this evening to celebrate the event.”<\/p>\n
The interactive evening brings history to life with some pretty recognizable figures, including Benjamin Franklin, showing off scientific experiments in historical tavern games.<\/p>\n
From there, the revolutionary experience moves to the Grand Ballroom for a modern take on cuisine in the 1700’s.<\/p>\n
“You’re having a great time and learning some things too, experiencing a little bit of the ambiance and the feeling of the 18th century,” said Beatty.<\/p>\n
Leaders hope the event sparks a wave of interest in local and American history.<\/p>\n
“It’s just such a wonderful opportunity to get more people, more young people involved. And here for the 250th, it’s an unreal experience.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. – The countdown to America’s 250th birthday is serving up a side of time travel. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,1391],"class_list":["post-222862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bethlehem-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}