This weekend made for some adventures. Darci and Ellie, two of my best friends from college (and in Ellie's case elementary school through high school), came out for a visit. They arrived around 10 pm on Friday, and we kicked off the weekend at the Harris Grill, a great restaurant on my street. We sample the spinach artichoke dip and pierogies. (For those who do not know, I have a sick addiction to spinach artichoke dip. To prove to you just how much I like it, I will divulge the number of times I have had it since moving to Pittsburgh. FIVE.)
On Saturday morning we went to Strip, the same market-style place that Andrew and I had visited. We also visited the Cathedral of Learning, one of Pitt's most recognizable buildings. It's a huge tower (37 floors!) that contains all sorts of classrooms and offices. The inside of looks like something from medieval times and/or Harry Potter. On the first and third floors of the Cathedral, there are a series of rooms known as the Nationalities Rooms. Each is decorated in the style of a different country. We wanted to check out these rooms, but promptly found out that they are locked to anyone not on a guided or self-guided tour. Deciding that we didn't want to actually go on guided tour, we opted for this huge tape recorder thing that had a key attached. The idea was that you listen to a recording in each room and then move onto the next one. Well, there's only so much you can listen to lady tell you about the way in which artisans carved a particular chair or painted a particular wall, so we eventually ditched the recording and just explored on our own. Maybe I'm biased (actually I'm DEFINITELY biased), but I liked the Irish and Italian rooms a lot. (Pictures will come tonight of the Cathedral!)
Saturday evening, we decided to check out the Southside area and ride the Mt. Washington Incline, which is essentially a trolley that goes up a hill across the river from downtown and has spectacular views. Prior to leaving, I took a look a google maps to determine how to get there. Unfortunately, Andrew has my GPS as a result of the drive to Charleston, so google maps is the best I can do. As we were driving over there, I got caught in a turn only lane, and ended up entering the freeway, which I most certainly did not want to do. There was no real way to back track, and I knew that I needed to cross the river, so I took the first bridge that I came to. This was apparently a mistake. Getting off of the bridge, there were two choices. 1) Go through a tunnel (I knew we did NOT want to do this). 2) Turn right. I took option 2, and we turned onto a road that promptly started a rather steep uphill drive. As we were driving, the city just kept getting tinier and tinier. We came around a corner, and all of a sudden, there was the incline station. At the TOP of Mt. Washington. Essentially, we had driven all the way up the hill. While we were driving, I was yelling at Darci and Ellie not to look out the windows so the incline trip would still be something of a surprise. Luckily I was able to find a way back down, and we drove down the opposite side of the mountain and finally got ourselves straightened out.
When we actually rode up the incline, we could look down and see all of the roads we'd mistakenly been, but we got some fantastic views of the city to make up for it! Pictures of that will also come soon.
That's all for this post!
Britt
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