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We are back from Pittsburgh
Mar. 14th, 2006 01:39 amWe visited with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fadethecat and landley this weekend. We set out at 9 Saturday morning, and arrived in time for lunch. We left Pittsburgh at 10:30 Monday morning, when it was 71 degrees there, and arrived home in Catonsville Monday afternoon to a temperature of 81 freakin' degrees fahrenheit. (That's 27°C, for you metricoids.)
( what we did in between )
The driving there and back was nice. It's less than four hours. For our Texas friends: I've already mentioned, Philadelphia, PA is closer to Baltimore than Houston is to Austin. Well, Pittsburgh PA is just about the same distance from Baltimore as Dallas is from Austin. The highway is a heck of a lot nicer scenery, too. Hills, hills, hills. Pittsburgh itself is all hills, as I remembered it being from the couple of times I was there a quarter of a century and more ago. I like it - it forces houses to be close together and neighborhoods to be compact and stuff to be nearby; it discourages the building of sprawling McMansions. I could stand to go back there with an electric scooter or a Segway and just drive up and down every street looking at the architecture; imagine an entire city of houses like Travis Heights, except mostly brick rather than wood frame. Most of the houses are from between 1900 and 1929, and are absolutely charming in style.
A digression about stew: ( (vegetarians will want to skip this part) ) Many people think they don't like parsnips, usually because they're actually thinking of turnips. But turnips are big white beets, whereas parsnips are big white carrots, much tastier. I happen to like beets and turnips as well, but I am aware not everyone does. Parsnips, however, should be much more popular than they are; everyone I've ever tried them on turns out to like them. Try some! Leeks, of course, just automatically improve almost anything. Well, maybe not dessert...
We managed to leave a library book there. With luck, Fade can find it and mail it back... no trip is without its little adventures.
We all had a lot of fun arguing with the GPS unit. Ah, new forms of entertainment in the 21st century!
We ate lunch, arrived home, and I took a nap until rehearsal. Then, coming home from rehearsal, part of I-95 was shut down, for no reason we could tell - everyone was just being shunted off to the I-895 spur. So it took us a bit of exploration to get back to the Broadway Diner on Eastern Avenue, which has the best dessert case we've seen so far in the Baltimore area. (And thank goodness for the GPS unit!!)
Now it's time for more sleep.
fadethecat and landley this weekend. We set out at 9 Saturday morning, and arrived in time for lunch. We left Pittsburgh at 10:30 Monday morning, when it was 71 degrees there, and arrived home in Catonsville Monday afternoon to a temperature of 81 freakin' degrees fahrenheit. (That's 27°C, for you metricoids.)( what we did in between )
The driving there and back was nice. It's less than four hours. For our Texas friends: I've already mentioned, Philadelphia, PA is closer to Baltimore than Houston is to Austin. Well, Pittsburgh PA is just about the same distance from Baltimore as Dallas is from Austin. The highway is a heck of a lot nicer scenery, too. Hills, hills, hills. Pittsburgh itself is all hills, as I remembered it being from the couple of times I was there a quarter of a century and more ago. I like it - it forces houses to be close together and neighborhoods to be compact and stuff to be nearby; it discourages the building of sprawling McMansions. I could stand to go back there with an electric scooter or a Segway and just drive up and down every street looking at the architecture; imagine an entire city of houses like Travis Heights, except mostly brick rather than wood frame. Most of the houses are from between 1900 and 1929, and are absolutely charming in style.
A digression about stew: ( (vegetarians will want to skip this part) ) Many people think they don't like parsnips, usually because they're actually thinking of turnips. But turnips are big white beets, whereas parsnips are big white carrots, much tastier. I happen to like beets and turnips as well, but I am aware not everyone does. Parsnips, however, should be much more popular than they are; everyone I've ever tried them on turns out to like them. Try some! Leeks, of course, just automatically improve almost anything. Well, maybe not dessert...
We managed to leave a library book there. With luck, Fade can find it and mail it back... no trip is without its little adventures.
We all had a lot of fun arguing with the GPS unit. Ah, new forms of entertainment in the 21st century!
We ate lunch, arrived home, and I took a nap until rehearsal. Then, coming home from rehearsal, part of I-95 was shut down, for no reason we could tell - everyone was just being shunted off to the I-895 spur. So it took us a bit of exploration to get back to the Broadway Diner on Eastern Avenue, which has the best dessert case we've seen so far in the Baltimore area. (And thank goodness for the GPS unit!!)
Now it's time for more sleep.
