Walking Around Pittsburgh

First of all, I never knew Pittsburgh ended in "h" until I tried to find it on Google maps. The things you learn while travelling.

Woah. I just downloaded all the pictures for this post and there are a ton. So I'll try to keep the captions short.

First stop: University of Pittsburgh. We basically just followed the road to the tallest building we could see and ended up on campus. Right in the heart of Pittsburgh.

Church on campus. St. Someone.

The largest learning center in the world except one in Moscow. Incredible views from the top. Another way we planned our trip. What did we see that we wanted to visit?

Doors to the church. Everyone seemed to stare at Kyler's IU shirt. I guess he wasn't thinking where he would be when he got dressed at 3 in the morning.

The church from the other side of the field.

Hogwart's. The inside of the learning center.

A gigantic fireplace. Kyler could've totally stood inside.

My attempt at perspective to show how huge that fireplace was.

Going up this stairwell we'd say things like, "To the dungeon" or "Off to slay the dragon". We thought we were so funny.

Puuuuuuuuullll!

Puuuuuuuuuuuuuush! We did some calisthenics along the way.

I took a picture of this little guy because he made me feel like I was back in Bloomington, on campus again. And when Kyler saw that I'd stopped to snap his photo he said something like, "What you've never seen a squirrel before?" I guess it was a little silly of me.

Across the street from campus was the Carnegie Natural History Museum. Apparently Mr. Carnegie bought dinosaur fossils and housed them here at his museum. These painted dinosaurs are all over town...this was the first one I saw before I knew the story behind the town, the Carnegies, and dinosaurs. I was a little confused.

This is the front of the Carnegie Art Museum. Those statues on the front are the famous composer Bach and astronomer Galileo.

Dinosaur.

Fancy history explanation sign.

A funny little fountain. It was so hot that day, I could've jumped in the water.

Kyler, what are you zooming in on?

Testing my chamelion-like camoflauge. Results: Needs work.

Trying to locate the students on this campus, we crossed over this bridge on which many locks were locked. Again, no students, but lots of locks.

A statue of...Christopher Columbus? Pretty sure he's not from Pittsburgh.

We ventured into a beautiful arts garden, but the inside tour cost money, which we were trying to avoid.

But outside, there was a wedding being set up. What a beautiful garden for a wedding. Though I'm glad it didn't rain for this bride, I did feel sorry for everyone involved because it was at least 100 degrees.

A few miles minutes later, we found ourselves practically engaged in a football game for Carnegie Mellon. Poor guys, I felt even sorrier for them playing in that weather.

As we turned the corner from the football field, this sight threw us both for a loop. This was one strange sculpture in the heart of campus.

At this point, I was near death and begged Kyler for a drink of water. BEGGED! It was well past noon, and we'd had neither food nor water since breakfast around 7ish that morning.

After dragging me another couple of miles, Kyler delivered. At Joe Mama's, I set the record for putting down three glasses of water in 32 seconds...or something like that.

And Kyler set the record for 'Quickest to spill glass of water.'

From lunch, we headed downtown downtown Pittsburgh to check into our hotel. And we napped.

Then we headed out to explore some more. This time on the other side of the bridges.

We stumbled upon a park, Ft. Pitt Park, where the French used to have a fort to guard the intersection of the three rivers. Upon seeing the English arrive, they destroyed their own fort (not sure about that one), and later the English established a larger (of course) fort, Fort Pitt. And that is how Pittsburgh got its name.

The only remaining building from Fort Pitt.

Apparently U. of Pittsburgh shares the Steelers' stadium for their football games. We sat across the river and could hear the crowd cheer. Wouldn't it be cool if IU would share the Colts' stadium? Maybe then I could see a game at Lucas Oil!

The sun began its descent, and we realized we were hungry yet again.

We stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. And this is what I get when I tell Kyler I want a picture of him.

This is Kyler's favorite building from the entire trip. I dubbed it the Batman Building.

And then we checked-in for the night. This is our hotel, the Omni Penn Hotel. Very lush, dontcha think?

Again, this is the face I get when I try to take his picture. Boys....

And then we slept from the moment our heads hit the pillow until 9am the next morning.
Early morning departure + 109 degree day + Walking miles upon miles = Pooped Out.

I bet they don't teach you that equation in school.