Traveling To or From Philly For Thanksgiving? Google Maps Says This Is When You Should Do It
If you have plans to head elsewhere this Thanksgiving, or expect to welcome out-of-town friends, here are some travel tips courtesy Google Maps (scroll in the map above to find the Philly data), which each year searches its huge database of searches to tease out travel trends in a number of U.S. cities.
As Curbed Philly reports, the last time you (or your visitors) should be on the road to or from Philly before Thanksgiving is on Wednesday from 2 to 5 p.m., so maybe you should take off a day early and set out for your destination on Tuesday. The only worse time to travel around here is Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m. Traffic in this area is 15 percent worse on Saturday than on Sunday, which is a good excuse to linger a while with your friends or relatives or have them stick around a bit longer.
If you’re doing the cooking and hosting, chances are that if you do have to brave that Wednesday-afternoon traffic, you’re headed out to a liquor store, bakery or farmers’ market in search of last-minute items for the feast. Maybe you plan to pick up a pie at the bakery or ham at the farmers’ market? If so, then you’re like most Americans according to Google: ham shops, pie shops and liquor stores top the nationwide search list for Thanksgiving Eve.
But maybe you forgot something and need to head out on Turkey Day itself. According to Google, the things we’re most likely to head out in search of are beer and pretzels. Must be a legacy of our state’s German heritage.
And on Black Friday, when most of the country is lined up at Best Buy, flocking to the outlet mall or hunting down Christmas trees, we in Philadelphia prefer to take in some culture instead: Our top searches are for movie theaters, historic landmarks and a children’s museum.
Whatever you do or whenever you do it, we hope you have a happy Thanksgiving. Just try to avoid getting caught in the traffic — ours is the fourth worst in the country at this time, says Google.
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