Pittsburgh Vacation - Day 4

We stayed in Morgantown, WV, home of the University of West Virginia Moutaineers, one of the newest members of the Big XII, Monday evening.   We were able to find the Morgantown Visitors Center early the first thing in the morning, which was a good thing. We certainly weren't able to find it the previous evening.  The lady at the visitor's center, Cookie, was AWESOME! She was a true gem...and very helpful.  She had maps and suggestions out the wazoo.  Before we left, Bruce wanted a picture of me standing next to Bob Huggins, basketball coach of the mens' team at UWV.  Huggins had spent one year at K-State before going back 'home' to UWV.

 It is kinda hard to see here, but that little yellow and blue cart looking thing is a type of public transportation system in Morgantown.  I am guessing it is aimed a lot at students at the university because it seems that the campus is pretty spread out.  It is called PRT (personal rapid transport), and they are little cars with like 8 seats, and standing room for probably like 4 or 5 more people.  We were there about mid-morning and the cars would pretty much just go "on demand"...whenever someone came who needed transport. It only cost $0.50 per person.

 We stopped at the Seneca Center before we left Morgantown, which was an old glass factory, which had been turned into retail and service space.  It had like photographer, real estate offices, a quilt shop, a woman's clothing shop, etc.

Upon leaving town, we drove through some moutainous miles with very very tall skinny trees.  It was very pretty to be driving along and seeing little waterfalls spewing from rocks along the side of the road. There was also a very quickly running river which had some mild rapids, which indicated that it was probably used for canoeing and kayaking.

We went to Arthurdale, WV, which was called "Eleanor's Little Town", a New Deal Project during the Great Depression, and a 'pet project' of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.  It was very interesting to learn about how this community began, and that 160 of the original 165 homesteads are still standing in the community.  I've provided a link to the website if you want to learn more about this community.

At this point we were planning to continue on south further into West Virginia. Unfortunately we made a wrong turn that we didn't realize we had made until we had made it almost to Maryland.  Oops.  So...we ended up deciding to head back toward Morgantown for the night. There was a restaurant that Cookie at the visitor's center had suggested, called "Apple Annie's" at Point Morgan (although we didn't know it was Pennsylvania), so we decided to head there.  We arrived at like 7:08, and we were turned away at the door, with the lady saying, "Oh, we close at 7:00. Sorry. Everything is turned off."  Oh, let's just say Bruce was less than charmed, and it was not a happy trip back down the highway. We ended up eating at Morgantown Brewery, and we stayed the night at Hotel Morgan, a Clarion hotel, which is definitely a historic hotel...very nice. So, fortunately, I think that helped to mend some bad feelings.


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Pittsburgh Vacation - Day 3

Decided today to get out of Pittsburgh for a few days.  We didn't really have anything in particular planned but Bruce had found a Frank Lloyd Wright house nearby. Fallingwaters to supposed to be one of the shining stars for FLW, which is saying a lot considering there are so many buildings that are designed and/or inspired by him. 

The house is about 1 1/2 hours south of Pittsburgh. When we left the city, it was kind of misty with the threat of more 'icky' weather.  The first 10 miles or so were just that...spitting mist, not bad at all. We stopped around Donagel for lunch at "Brady's", a fun little small town diner, and stopped at "The Country Store", another gem of finding on travels to look around at the eclectic selections.

Unfortunately, while we were doing all of that, the weather began deteriorating, and then deteriorating quite rapidly.  The spitting mist became spitting, then shooting ice pellets.  Literally.  Keep in mind that we were starting to enter into beginnings of some mountain country.  It wasn't terribly bad, but ....

By the last 3 to 5 miles outside of Fallingwaters it was getting pretty bad. The road was getting pretty slick from the build up of icy slushy pellets on the roadway.  The outside temperature was hovering around 32, then dipping to 30, and back up around 32.  We were pretty glad when we made it to the house. 

 Thinking that we would be the only fools...ahem...visitors to the property, boy were we wrong. There were actually many hearty souls making the "pilgrimage" to Fallingwaters.  Photos were not, unfortunately, but of course, not allowed inside of the house.

 This is the side of the guest house which is located above the main house.

 Looking down the path from the guest house to the main house.

 This picture is taken while standing on the bridge leading to the main house. The bridge is going over the creek, which was running pretty good off of the waterfall behind me.

 The main house of Fallingwaters right behind us.  An interesting aspect just over my shoulder towards the creek is a glassed in staircase leading to the creek from the main living area of the house.  The glass doors could be lifted up and moved out of the way to make one's way down the staircase to a small landing right at the creek.

So when we left Fallingwaters, the weather was much better and starting to clear off thank goodness. We were very close to the West Virginia state line, so we decided to head to Morgantown, via Connellsville and Uniontown, Pennsylvania (both, unfortunately, very sad, hard hit by the recession, towns).

Morgantown, WV, thusfar, is not that different unfortunately.  We are going to explore a little more tomorrow, and Bruce has found a few interesting possibilities for historical museums, etc.

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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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Pittsburgh Vacation - Day 1

We arrived in Pittsburgh on Saturday, March 16.  Who knew that St. Patricks Day is HUGE in Pittsburgh? Certainly not us!  It is huge though. There were people in green all over the place.  Literally...all.over.the.place!  You had to be really careful when driving, and everyone at the hotel and the restaurants warned to "look out for the crazies".

This is a picture of our hotel room. We were staying at the Omni William Penn. It is a beautiful historic hotel. I will try to get photos of the lobby and outside before we leave. 

 We had dinner at an Italian restaurant in this one area called Market Square, which looks to be old converted factory area. The restaurant is called Buca di Peppi, and it was awesome.  After dinner, we walked across the street, and boarded the "Incline" which was once used as a form of public transportation to help workers go from their place of work at the bottom of the hill to their homes at the top of the hill. Now it is still probably a way for folks to do that, but it's probably more just a "for fun" or touristy thing.  These photos are views of Pittsburgh downtown from the top of the hill.

 This is inside the car (there are three cars attached end to end that each hold a maximum of eight people.

This was a photo from the airport when we first arrived. It posted here in the wrong place and I dont know how to get it back up at the top of the post so here it is!  Allison wanted me to take a picture of her with the dinosaur bones. :)

 
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