Pittsburgh Vacation - Day 2

In trying to maximize our travel visits, and appeal as much to all of us (very tough at times), we usually confront the travel guides and brochures when we get to the city. We had tried to do a little pre planning, but really not much. 

With today being a Sunday, too, sometimes it is hard to know what is open and what hours the things are open (as Sundays often have shortened hours).  We were pretty lucky today.

First off we visited the Senator Heinz History Center (red brick building in back). It was a really interesting museum with exhibits for adults and those for kids.  There was a wonderfully interesting exhibit on "1968" which I found incredibly intriguing. I even had to buy the book The 1968 Project.  The 60s are an interesting time for me. 

Remember Mrs. Beasley?  I so wish I still had my doll!!!!!

Mr. Rogers began his show in the Pittsburgh market.

There was a kids area, "Kidsylvania"....

After the Heinz History Center, Allison was off to the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh (rated in the Top 10 of children's museums by Parents magazine in 2011, as a banner in the atrium pointed out). It was nice. We both enjoyed ourselves. I think I really preferred the Indianapolis children's museum better, but this one was much different in that it had many more hands on create something areas.  Whereas many of the others had more imaginary play exhibits.  Nothing wrong with either type. 

There was a Backyard area, which essentially was an art studio. There were a lot of very different types of art creating going on here as opposed other art areas.

 They had screen printing today, which was very cool.

 An example of others' work prior to our arrival. I LOVE the blue cat.

 Wa-la!  Masterpiece!

 A climbing structure...kinda like a stand up mouse maze! :)

 This was the "Makeshop"...lots of hands on building...electric circuits, computer stuff, etc.

 This was in the "Attic"...Allison LOVED it...this was a display of puppets. The puppets were then displayed on a computer monitor that you could easily change and make move in different directions virtually.

 This is the "Garage"...lots of moving gadgets.

 The Attic again. In the back, up the stairs, was a "Gravity" room...it was freaky. The floor was tiled like 45 degree angle...talk about hard to walk and feeling a little woozy! gessh...  she could come out the other side down a slide (see gray tubes).

 In the "Garage" area...

Move with Art...there were many different things to do, but I liked this one. At the bottom there were levers, and you could push or pull and it would move different parts of this wooden body figure. It was heavy and tall, but just cool.

 This was in the "Move with Art" area...there was a camera, and you could make funny faces, and then it would put it in a moving mosaic on the screen on the wall. Allison's picture is shown here on the lower left hand square.

Bruce spent the day doing "Bruce things" including buying a new GPS system since we left home and forgot ours and there is no way that I have my map skills honed to do this type of city driving with just a map (and then not very good ones at that). I was so happy to see that. He went to several other places. He enjoyed bouncing around.

We had dinner at a placed called "Hofbrauhaus".  Bruce was in H.E.A.V.E.N.   It is styled after (and I would assume owned by the same folks) who own the Hofbrauhaus in Munich, Germany.  We went there when we were in Germany in 2003. The grand beer hall is huge just like in Munich. It was very cool. The food was good too!

The "Mad Bavarian"  was even there this evening for some live music. This also made Bruce very happy. :)

 A front shot of the restaurant.

 
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