A Buckeye in the Steel City
Even though I haven't been a resident of Pittsburgh for over five years, I still go back to visit my parents. They live in the suburbs, and that's where I usually spend most of my time - but not last week. I decided to use my latest spring break to visit all the fun places I had taken for granted during my K-12 years but had begun to miss after I moved away.
Geoff and I started by driving down to the University of Pittsburgh's campus. The Cathedral of Learning is one of my favorite buildings of all time. It contains a giant reading/study room and almost thirty nationality-themed classrooms (Russian, Lebanese, Chinese, etc) that appear to be utilized quite regularly. The Cathedral is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
(My camera can't handle panoramic shots, so I had to take multiple photos and paste them together to somehow create a much squatter representation of reality.)
Then we went up the Monongahela Incline to Mount Washington (just south of downtown).
This is what we saw immediately after we got up there:
We walked along the edge of the hill, going out onto the lookout platforms that lined our path. Somewhere out there the dinosaurs roam?
Actually, Pittsburgh does have a thing for its prehistoric animals. Like Chicago's cows and Cincinnati's pigs, Pittsburgh's dinosaurs have been beautified, auctioned off and scattered throughout the city (and perhaps beyond). Tracking them all down might make for a fun and prolonged future scavenger hunt, but for spring break I settled on visiting the three on display at PPG Place in downtown Pittsburgh. Meet Ketchupsaurus (#42), Mr. Dig (#58), and Philiposaurus (#61).
After our trip downtown, Geoff and I drove to the Carnegie Science Center. Because of poor planning we didn't have enough time to visit all the floors, so we tried to maximize our fun. Geoff played air hockey against a robot and won! The display even said "HUMAN WINS" but in such a fleeting manner that I wasn't able to take a photo. Our next stop was the Omnimax, a theater with a domed screen that envelops the audience and creates an incredibly realistic experience. I love it every time I go.
While we still had time, Geoff and I hurried out onto the north shore of the Ohio River for a tour of the USS Requin, a retired submarine moored alongside the Science Center. We walked through the entire contraption, ducking our heads to get through doorways and around pipes. The quarters were cramped and the air was stale, but I would definitely do it again.
Our final destination was the SportsWorks building, where I spent the last 30 minutes of our visit to the Carnegie Science Center attached to a bungee cord (no remotely flattering images came out of that activity).