Restaurants and Shopping Near Swarthmore

Colleges and Universities A-Z Swarthmore College
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<p>I wish someone had done this when my daughter was a first year student!</p>

<p>Here's a link to a Google Map of Swarthmore with most of the essential dining and shopping options within three miles of campus.</p>

<p>Google</a> Maps</p>

<p>I've broken the listings into three groups linked down the left side of the page:</p>

<p>SHOPPING ON THE PIKE
Where to buy essential supplies for the dorm room on the Baltimore Pike. The mall. Target. Best Buy. The Cingular/ATT cellphone store. Bed and Bath. Grocery store. I've also included the Howard Johnsons motel which is a good clean renovated motel close to campus in the $100 night range.</p>

<p>DINING ON THE PIKE
Every chain restaurant known to man, including some pretty good ones. And, of course, Starbucks. These are restaurants that are suitable for a quick meal after a long day of travel or schlepping junk up to dorm rooms. They are popular haunts for college kids, many within walking distance, all served by the 24/7 Route 109 bus from campus or by the Target shuttle on Tuesday and Sunday nights. We've always been partial to Bertucci's, a Boston-based upscale brick oven pizza chain. And, they have beer! One highlight is Heng's Thai. This is a tasteful, quiet fairly upscale Thai restaurant. Good place.</p>

<p>FINE DINING IN MEDIA
This is what I wish I had known about sooner. Media (about three miles from campus) has become a regional restaurant hot spot. State Street is lined with trendy, fun restaurants of every imaginable cuisine. From really good Indian to a high-end Japanese fusion place opened by Morimoto's sous chef on 40 Iron Chef Japan battles, with a menu similar, but a bit less pricy than Morimoto's restaurant downtown. This is where the Swatties in the know head for a birthday dinner. The place was crawling on graduation weekend. So, if you've had a chance to clean up after a long day and want a nice family dinner before orientation or during parents weekend, Media is the place to go. For students, the restaurants are a nine minute walk from the Media train station.</p>

<p>Click any of the listings to highlight it on the map (zoom in to see better) and for additional information, usually reviews and a website with the menu. If anyone has any more to add, let me know. Or let me know if any go out of business and I'll delete them from the map.</p>

<p>Enjoy. And, somebody might want to post this link to the 2012 new students' site. They'll get the most use out of it.</p>

<p>PS: I didn't put it on the map, but you have to go to Iron Chef Morimoto's on Chestnut Street downtown once during your Swat stay. Incredible. Just incredible.</p>

<p>[url=<a href="http://www.morimotorestaurant.com/%5DMorimoto%5B/url"&gt;http://www.morimotorestaurant.com/]Morimoto[/url&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p>

2

<p>Thank you!</p>

<p>We will be flying to drop D off, so we will have to arrive a few days early and do dorm shopping there. Can't thank you enough!</p>

<p>We are from Florida and she will have to get winter clothes. If anyone has suggestions as to where she can go (that she can get to) to buy winter clothes when Fall arrives, that will be apprciated too.</p>

3

<p>The Springfield Mall has a lot of clothing stores. In addition to Macy's, here's the link to the mall where you can see their women's clothing stores, everything from Victoria's Secret to Modern Maternity (which should cover soup to nuts!)</p>

<p>Springfield</a> Mall</p>

<p>For actual winter gear, like a fleece lined winter parka, she can mail order that stuff from places like:</p>

<p>L.L.Bean</a> Summer Sale – Save up to 50%
Kittery</a> Trading Post: Always Free Shipping on Orders over $50!
Outdoor</a> Gear from Campmor - Clothing, Camping Equipment and More - Top Brands including North Face & Columbia Sportswear
REI:</a> Outdoor Gear, Equipment & Clothing for Camping, Hiking, Cycling, Fitness, Kayaking, Canoeing and More</p>

<p>Or, any big sporting goods retailer should sell this kind of gear. There's more need for rain gear than heavy snow gear in Philly. Most of us yankees have convertible ski parkas -- a water proof shell with a zip out fleece lining for cold weather and a detachable hood. But, college kids tend to just wear a water logged college sweatshirt! Personally, I like turtleneck shirts and fleece.</p>

4

<p>Target has everything for dorm rooms: pole lamps, waste baskets, etc.</p>

<p>You can order a dorm refrigerator from Best Buy and pick it up at the Baltimore Pike store. Or, you can order one through the college and pick it up at the bookstore on campus (it's quite the sight to see kids lugging refrigerators across campus!)</p>

5

<p>Those are all great suggestions! You will probably find everything you need at the mall. And the other stores are great options also. Baltimore Pike is a very comprehensive shopping area. No more than 10 minutes away from Swat.</p>

6

<p>For more clothing options, there is a Marshalls and a Filene's Basement (the huge discount outlet division of the Boston department store) in the Marples Crossing Shopping Center. That's where the AMC Movie Complex is located and the Swarthmore shuttle runs continuously there and back on Friday and Saturday nights from 7pm to 1 am. </p>

<p>On the map, just cross over Baltimore Pike on Route 320 (West Sproul Road) and continue north til you hit Route 1. There are two big shopping centers. Might not be a bad idea to buzz up there in the car and scope out what's there.</p>

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<p>Just in case anyone hasn't used google maps much, you can click the "satellite" tab in the map to get a birds eye view of the terrain.</p>

8

<p>Thank you so much for all this information! For those of us with first years coming in August, this is really helpful. </p>

<p>Which hotels do you recommend? I see there is a Howard Johnson's on the google map. Is it clean and decent? </p>

<p>Also, do you know which cellular service is most used by the students at Swarthmore?</p>

9

<p>
[quote]
Which hotels do you recommend? I see there is a Howard Johnson's on the google map. Is it clean and decent?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Yeah. That's why I put it there. It was gutted and renovated, reopening about two years ago. We've stayed there three times since, including graduation weekend. It's not a Hyatt suite, but it's fine. Everything is new, top to bottom in the rooms, good beds, good showers, good TV, good air conditioning. Clean. It's stayed that way over the course of a couple of years now, which is a good sign.</p>

<p>Great location. Free airport shuttle van. Vastly better than the other option out in Media (now called the Express Inn). </p>

<p>We paid $109 a night for two people graduation weekend. The other options in chain hotels are at the airport, which is not very far from Swarthmore, but can get you tied up in rush hour traffic.</p>

<p>There are some lovely B&Bs in Swarthmore. We've never had any luck getting reservations. My wife has stayed with retired professors who rented out rooms for a $100 a night to charity. She enjoys that a lot.</p>

10

<p>On cell phones: they were all a bit spotty on reception when my daughter first started Swarthmore. In 2005, Cingular added a new tower on top of an apartment building on Chester Road near the train station in downtown Swarthmore. Since then, I don't think we've had a dropped call. </p>

<p>So, all things being equal, I'd go Cingular/AT&T or whatever they call it these days for reception at Swarthmore.</p>

11

<p>It is good to know there is a clean hotel near Swat. We are only 2 1/2 hours away, so most of the time we can drive back and forth, but I imagine there will be performances we will want to attend that will be over late, so having a place to stay nearby is a plus. My daughter is interested in theatre and chorus.</p>

12

<p>We stayed near the airport graduation weekend (Hampton Inn for $103 per night). If you take the back roads to campus (about a 10-15 minute drive) you can avoid alot of the traffic and easily access the south entrance to campus. It was very convenient. </p>

<p>I echo ID's suggestion to buy alot of stuff when you get there. You can pre-order stuff at BB&B and Best Buy to be ready for pickup there. That's what we did with S's fridge freshman year.</p>

13

<p>
[quote]
If you take the back roads to campus (about a 10-15 minute drive) you can avoid alot of the traffic and easily access the south entrance to campus. It was very convenient.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>The key to that is learning the backroads down to I-95 so that you can bypass the I-476/I-95 interchange. You would almost always be doing a "reverse commute" along I-95 from airport (outbound in the morning, inbound at night), so if don't get bottled up on I-476, it's not a bad drive at all.</p>

<p>Having said that, if you can get a reservation at the Howard Johnsons, it's probably nicer than anything under $150 a night at the airport and a straight 2.5 mile shot from the motel to Starbucks to Swarthmore.</p>

<p>I have no idea when it sold out for graduation weekend. I made our reservations a year ago when we found out that it had reopened the prior fall.</p>

14

<p>I actually got the back road directions, which does avoid I-476, from the Cygnet S got his freshman year (good thing I hold onto stuff). For the uninitiated, the Cygnet is the Swat freshman facebook.</p>

15

<p>I added the another group of stores to the map:</p>

<p>SHOPPING AT MARPLES CROSSING
The only thing of interests for move in days here might be Staples and Circuit City, if you prefer over Best Buy. However, this shopping center is the home of the AMC 10 Movie Complex and Swarthmore runs a shuttle van back and forth the three miles on Friday and Saturday nights from 7:00 pm to 1 am. Therefore, it would be easy to use this shuttle for some clothes shopping followed by a movie (or not). Options here include Marshalls, Filenes Basement, and Old Navy.</p>

<p>Between the movie shuttle and the Target shuttle on Tuesday and Sunday nights, thats four nights a week of shopping pleasure for Swatties.</p>

<p>The only thing missing is the shuttle down to the discount liquor stores just across the border in Delaware.</p>

16

<p>When you say take backroads to avoid I 476, Is there a better way to get to Swarthmore, when coming from the west on the PA turnpike? We ususally take the turnpike to the Valley Forge exit and then south on 476. (we are coming from Frederick Md) We have not really encountered much traffic yet, but have only been to Swarthmore 6 times so far.</p>

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<p>No. I-476 seems to be fine down to the Swarthmore exit. We go that way coming down the NJ Turnpike to the Penn Turnpike, then south on I-476. The only time 476 is bad is during evening rush hour, especially on a Friday. It was bad the Friday before graduation all the way south from Bryn Mawr. We are usually earlier, but the NJ Turnpike was also bumper to bumper south from NYC, so it added an hour to the trip.</p>

<p>The frequent traffic jams are from the I-95 interchange up to the Swarthmore exit. That's the stretch that Swatties quickly learn to avoid like the plague because it can take half an hour to go three miles. There's a bail-out exit from I-476 south of Swarthmore, if it's bad and ways to go directly from I-95 up to Swarthmore, bypassing I-476 completely.</p>

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<p>We also prefer to avoid I 95 whenever possible, which is why we go north on Rt 15 up to Harrisburg, then east on the Pa turnpike. Thanks for the info!</p>

<p>Any idea how the cell phone service is for verizon?</p>

19

<p>Do you go up thru Getttysburg to Harrisburg from Frederick? I'd want to try the Baltimore route. Once you are north of Balitmore, it's clear sailing up to Swarthmore except at rush hour.</p>

<p>Sorry, we cross posted. The Harrisburg route looks like it adds 50 miles to the trip compared to shooting over the beltway around Baltimore and up I-95. I've never had any trouble on I-95 between Baltimore and Swarthmore. The fun starts south of that and, of course, north on the New Jersey Parking Lot.</p>

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<p>Swatmom, Verizon's service is good almost everywhere on campus, and okay in almost all the places where it's not truly good. Willets basement is the only place I know for sure that there's almost no Verizon service at all.</p>