Start from 28 curated places around Reading, PA, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
A Light in the Attic
A hidden speakeasy-style restaurant on the second floor of a Penn Avenue building in West Reading — the cocktails are inventive and well-made, the New American menu is creative enough to justify seeking it out, and the atmosphere consistently outperforms what the address would suggest. The kind of dinner you describe to people rather than just recommending.
Chen Vegetarian House
A West Reading gem doing something genuinely uncommon: a serious vegetarian menu with Chinese-inspired dishes that don't feel like they're making a compromise. The mock-meat preparations are done with enough craft that meat-eaters regularly become regulars here. Quiet, comfortable room; service is attentive without being intrusive.
Trails & outdoors
Hawk Mountain Loop
A 5.4-mile circuit through the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary ridgeline — rocky scrambles, open boulder fields, and the North and South Lookouts where raptors flow south on fall migration days. This trail has more character than most in eastern Pennsylvania; the exposure on the ridge sections is real, and the views reward the effort.
Neversink Loop Trail
A 5.3-mile loop on the wooded ridgeline south of Reading with views of the Schuylkill River and the city. The trail is moderately challenging — rocky and steep in sections — and feels properly remote despite being minutes from downtown. The best option for a longer hike without driving far from the city.
Things to do
GoggleWorks Center for the Arts
An arts campus worth a full afternoon — beyond the galleries and working studios, the glassblowing facility is the main draw. Watching molten glass being shaped by a skilled artist at one of the working benches is genuinely compelling. Classes are available for visitors who want to try it themselves. The independent cinema on-site rounds out the option for a rainy afternoon.
Hawk Mountain Sanctuary - Visitor Center
The visitor center at Hawk Mountain anchors the trail system with excellent interpretive exhibits on raptor biology, migration ecology, and the history of the sanctuary. Even visitors not hiking the full loop can learn a substantial amount from the center alone. The fall hawk counts are broadcast live from the North Lookout via volunteer counters — the data is viewable in real-time inside the center.
Landmarks & sights
Reading Pagoda
A Japanese-style pagoda perched on the summit of Mount Penn, built in 1908 as a resort hotel that never quite opened — now a city landmark with panoramic views of Reading and the Schuylkill Valley below. The drive up Skyline Drive is worthwhile on its own, but the trail hike from the base earns you the summit in a way the car doesn't. The view at dusk is the best argument for staying until the lights come on.
GoggleWorks Center for the Arts
The largest arts center of its kind in the country, housed in a former goggle factory in downtown Reading. Thirty working studio artists, three galleries, a ceramics studio, hot glass blowing facility, printmaking, photography darkrooms, and a small independent film theater — all accessible to the public. The glass blowing demonstrations are free to watch and genuinely dramatic.