Pittsburgh

Last weekend my family took a trip to Pittsburgh.  I had a really pretty nice time.  Firstly we went to the Pittsburgh zoo.  Though it is a nice zoo, it wasn't extraordinary.  They had the basic animals, which are pretty fun to look at.  My favorite part was the baby elephant.  He was so stinking adorable! 

You can't really avoid end of the year school groups, I know.  I just don't like them a lot.  There are so many kids with those stupid paper form things with questions they have to answer.  That limits the fun tremendously I think.  Then they don't get to look at things as much as they would like because they are in a group of what seems to be a hundred. 

Why does everyone have to talk at once?  Because they are talking at once, they have to shout to make sure that their fellows can hear them.  So you have a group of hot and somewhat cranky small people screaming and lugging papers with grumpy chaperones and teachers staring them down with their beady eyes. 

I don't want to sound all bible clutching ankle length jean skirt on you guys here, but I am glad that I was with my family visiting the zoo than with a group of 40 or so slow moving peers in matching T shirts.  Just sayin'.

That night after dumping our belongings in our hotel and waiting for Mom to look up everything she needed to know off of her mini, we set off to do something UNPLANNED.  We went to the Hard Rock cafe!  I know this doesn't go with the overall awe inspiring coolness of the Hard Rock cafe... but this was my first time.  I had a really really really good time!  The walls are covered with things that the beautiful people used, I saw a jacket that Michael Jackson wore, drums from Kiss... and that's about it for the things I knew what they were tell you the truth.  But it was still cool.

After we ate we went outside to watch the water display.  It was "dancing" lines of shooting water, doing the "dancing" part to various music, the one we watched was old show theme songs.  It was boring after about the 3rd song, but it was still pretty to watch. 

After that, we went to this "Historical Monument" trolly box cart thing that goes about 5 miles an hour up a not so steep mountain hill thing to the top where you could get off, do whatever, then get back on and go down.  Living on the edge!!  It was cute.  Once we made it to the top, which I was thankful for because that thing had been there for like a hundred years, we went over to look at Pittsburgh.  We made our way without getting run over to this beautiful view of the city.  It was getting a little dark, but not dark enough to see all of the lights.  Cars looked like beetles and people like ants.  It was very gorgeous.

After we took in the city, we went and got some ice cream at this little store that was to me the food eating version on Sammy's.  Once again though, I thought it was cute.  Then we made it back down the slope in the hundred year old box tram thing, and drove back to our hotel.

The next morning we went to the science center.  They just added a sports center, and it was great!  They had a rock wall, a human yo yo, 2 motion simulators, and a bungee thing above a trampoline for maximum jumping satisfaction.  I had such a good time in there, two hours passed without seeming like 20 minutes.

After getting our fill of that, we had lunch and wandered around until our movie.  It was about Shackleton and how he kept all of his men alive even under the worst possible circumstances.  They all made it.  That really gives hope, I think, to hear a story like that.  Right now I'm reading Lord of the Flies, and it is easy to think that people would revert back to the animal inside of them when they were removed from the outside world.  But things like that give hope that, no, we can be good inside too.