Pittsburgh day trip

Saturday, November 4, 2006

We woke up early in the morning for our trip down to our neighbouring state, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh is only about 2.5 hours' drive away from where we are, so we went down to zou zou.

Warning: lots of cam whoring ahead, skip next few photos if you cannot take it..

Haha, hope I didn't scare you too much. Please don't run away! I was bored on the journey there la..

South Side

This is a little neighbourhood which has lots of quaint little shops, pubs and cafes. It was pretty dead in the morning when we reached, but at night we saw lots of pub crawlers around. There were many shops selling really interesting things like wigs, and vintage fashion. That's another word for old old stuff.

After dropping zhang xi at his friend's place, we actually came here by accident, cos the google maps address for the Cathedral of Learning was screwed up and brought us here. So we decided to have lunch + toilet break here anyway.

We stopped by Quizno's for brunch. I love subway really and there are tv ads saying that Quizno is a lot more meaty, they use real meat blahblahblah and you should take the Quizno challenge somethingsomething.. Haha so I thought we should try it out. JY was laughing at me for falling for marketing gimmicks. Well, apparently only one of the subs were more meaty [the one advertised].. the rest were pretty normal. I actually like subway for the veg, so even if it's less meat I still support my subway. I found the lil trays very cool though, they were Q shaped and the little tail at the bottom served as the handle [or so i thought]. That's my bourbon chicken sub.

Next we were off to find the Cathedral of Learning. Some sights along the way..

Old and new.

Allegheny County Soldiers Memorial

Cathedral Of Learning

We finally reached the Cathedral of Learning. This is part of University of Pittsburgh, and it's really beautiful! There are 26 Nationality Classrooms in the 1st and 3rd floors, each decorated according to different nationalities.

I wonder why they call themselves Pitt. Doesn't exactly sound very glamourous. We paid for an hour's parking and wandered in..

My first thought was, so harry potter! My.. I was so amazed at how it's actually being used for studying! People are sitting around and reading.. You know, it's so hard to imagine that this beautiful cathedral is used daily for something as mundane as lectures and tutorials. Or sitting around to study. I even got a shock when I saw someone using a laptop. Haha I know it's absolutely normal but I half expect the place to have no electricity and technology.. and for people to use candlelights and magic wands.. Maybe fly around on broomsticks. heehee. you know what I mean? Damn cool place to study lah.

See? people are ACTUALLY STUDYING!

They even have cool chairs for you to pose with. haa.

It's like a castle! This is on the 3rd floor where the free and open classrooms are. There's a charge of what, $3 to get an audio guide and keys to all the classrooms but we were kinda blur and didn't get that. Turned out that we could only access the few classrooms on the 3rd floor and not all of them.

The first classroom we went to..

The Ukrainian Room

Can't help noticing that the door is shaped like a coffin. =p

Israel Heritage Classroom

Love the cool blackboards and how they placed chalk and dusters so that we could play around with them.

A replica of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

This door is like a bar of chocolate! i'm becoming like my roommate who associates everything with chocs. =p

Kinda spooky actually.

This lonely classbench reminds me of the class benches at the top floor of EA block in NUS Engin. haha. Just about 2000 times prettier.

African Heritage Classroom

boooring.

Early American Room

Too bad it was locked.. Didn't look like there was much in there anyway.

The Indian Room

Ameek must have felt right at home here.

Wait.. and what's this? The first thing that came to my head was an asylum.. look at the padded doors!

Turned out that it is an LT!! Wah damn cool to have lectures here. There was a large painting on the right wall.

The Armenian Classroom

The Japanese Room

This place totally reminded me of lingxin and his japanese architecture craze.

I thought this was a really gross way of learning human anatomy.

Spot the difference. I think puji copy me ah..

The Austrian Room.

This is definitely the prettiest room we went to. Sparkly chandeliers with shiny red silk chairs, complete with ceiling art.. How to study in a room like that?

I really very fat hor.

On the way out of the place..

Retro sign on the revolving door

Ain't it majestic?

A garden opposite the cathedral where we parked our car.

diplodocus wearing a scarf

You know, the dinosaur led me to assume that the building behind it was the Museum of Natural History. On closer inspection I saw names like Dvorak on the walls.. wait a minute..

It's actually the Carnegie Music Hall. ha.ha.

There wasn't really much to see, so we hopped back into the car and drove around..

Turned out the Museum of Natural History was right next to the Carnegie Music Hall. I think it's supposed to be famous for its dino collection? Anyways, we didn't go in. and it had a freaking ugly fish outside it. There was also a freaking ugly elephant on its side, won't bother putting it up.

On the way to the science center.

Heinz Field. Home of the Pittsburgh Steelers.. not exactly clevelanders' friends.

The field was right beside the Carnegie Science Center. We were planning to pay to go in, but there was this learning exhibit at the lobby, which was pretty fun and we spent some time there.. Ended up not paying a cent for some fun!

The following wall is made of some material which can absorb/emit light [sooomething like that]! What happens is you can pose against it while a light shines on you for a while, then when the light goes off you run away and you'll see your shadow remaining on the wall!

Not only the adorable kids had lots of fun with it.. we also had a ball of a time making silly shadows and running away.. hahah!!

Infra red camera.. thats me and puji.

We were happily snapping pictures at this when we saw lil cartoon characters dropping down the screen.. Didn't realise what it was until jy found out that we were supposed to 'catch' the characters! Had a fun time dancing about trying to catch the falling characters with our heads, limbs.. And looking like complete idiots as usual.

A group of kids later ran up, upon seeing how much fun we were having. They started dancing around as well, but haha they didn't realise that it was a mixed reality game.. and were just dancing about. Oh well.. I think they really should have used a better screen, and put some instructions there. It would have been a lot more fun!

There you go. Carnegie Science Center. Us cheapos happily left the place after playing around with the free (i think) exhibits. Next we walked along the river to take loads and loads of photos. Free and entertaining activity. i like.

The photographer not bad, even carry handbag for the model.

Very indian pose by the river. Can imagine ameek washing her long long hair in the river? Heehee.

Ok, this time i'm not just acting cute with the 'ok sign'. You know, I try to link with wikipedia and all that, in the hopes that you guys can learn a little bit about the places that I go to. Well the interesting thing about pittsburgh, is that it's where 3 rivers meet!! At exactly the point behind us. That's why the pose.. THREE rivers, the Ohio, Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers.

wtf is jy doing

Behind me, the Monongahela inclines. Basically it's a lil carriage that takes you up to the top of Mount Washington. [which isn't really much of a mountain huh.]

We passed by Station Square on our way to the Duquesne Incline [just another incline which is supposed to be better]. Station Square kinda reminds me of Clarke Quay, nice place to chill out at night, even has Hooters.

bottom of the Monongahela incline.

The silly address we had was that of the top of the Duquesne incline. HOW SMART. Which means we didn't even have to take it, but oh ok we decided to try for the sake of it since we came all the way here.

Breathtaking view of Downtown Pittsburgh. The area around the fountain is Point State Park, which we couldn't access cos of expensive parking in the area.

That's Heinz Field and Carnegie Science Center, where we were moments ago.

powerful zoom!

The Duquesne Incline

eeyer, smile until so ugly

Yup, we decided to take it down, and back up. Kinda defeats the purpose but what the heck.

Anyway, the whole Mount WAshington thing really reminds me of Hongkong's Victoria's Peak! Nice restaurants on the top.. and the inclines. Well at least the inclines were more comfortable and NOT slanted.. and doesn't make u go backwards on the way down. hahaha.

Like cable cars, it's kinda scary to actually look at the track. Cos then you realise how old it is and you start to scrutinise the wooden bars for signs of mould and you also realise that all that's holding the whole carriage of passengers is one cable... *shudder* let's just say I was pretty relieved when we reached the bottom. And the top on the return trip.

This statue was a few blocks away from the duquesne incline. You know, it's kinda familiar, I thought I'd seen it somewhere before.. dunno leh. Maybe i've been seeing too many statues lately.

The sun setting, and it was only 4+. It's a pretty sucky time to go on tours cos the days are so short and you don't get your money's worth.

Haha.. puji asked jy not to sit [i dunno why], resulting in this uncomfortable half squat pose.

Next it was time to go source for dinner! Restaurants on Mount WAshington were pretty expensive, but the view was superb and it's damn romantic! We went downtown in search of cheap food.

We decided on a very original and creative choice of..

Mac Dee! My quarter pounder with cheese sucked big time. It tasted like a $1 hamburger. Boo.

Running out of places to go to, we went back up on Mount Washington after dinner. Haha.. time to test out his camera's nightshot capabilities.

sorry puji, your camera is damn good cool but your photoshop skills cannot make it! We look like zombies lah.

Outside PNC park.

Next we drove around aimlessly with the advice of GPS, to south side again, strip district [i think. nothing much there] and PNC park, which we realised is a baseball stadium..

Well, Pittsburgh was definitely the most fun day trip I've taken. It's so much more happening a city than Cleveland. Then again, every city is more happening than Cleveland. We had a good laugh at puji's jokes and secret [wink wink] on the way back.

And before I go back to maplestory [jipangu map! daaaamn cute!] I shall leave you with this pretty paranomic picture of Pittsburgh.. Enjoy!