Pittsburgh, 2nd day....

So for the 2nd day our main destinations were centered around U of Pittsburgh. Carnegie Mellon also has some campus sites around the same place....

Tried to take a better picture of Cathedral of Learning and Heinz Memorial Chapel compared to the one in AAA tour guide....

Heinz memorial chapel from across the street....

Colorful dinosaur....

I guess that small old house is part of the original houses that was on the site where they built Cathedral of Learning....Billy said we should pretend it's our newly bought summer property...right....I would not want one like that....

Took a photo of their music hall that is part of Carnegie Mellon campus. I just don't know why there would be a dinosaur in front of the building. I thought it's like the natural history museum or something....hahahaha

At the door of Cathedral of Learning.....

We went to the high floors to check out the view....through the windows you can actually get views of Pittsburgh....

So I guess people actually "learn" here...lol

King and Queen....and the chair next to me was supposed to be for prince Hades....just need to photoshop later on....

Pretty cool ceiling huh....

I liked that gate a lot but could not manage to catch it when nobody was around....

Here are photos of the Heinz chapel....It's actually pretty small but nicely built I guess....at least things look nice in the photos....:)



We thought about going to Phipps Conservatory....but then I guess tickets were kinda pricey and everything was in the green houses....We took a picture with it...and left....hahahahaha...oh plus we didn't coins for the parking....:p

We went to Mt. Washington to get a view of the whole Pittsburgh. Weather wasn't all that good when we went there and parking was really hard to find. I think we only spent like 10 min there just for taking photos....

I am not sure if George Washington and the Indian guy liked it when we interrupted them....

For dinner we found this really cool restaurant that was located in an ex-church (baptist) building.....

Quite an odd feeling to walk into a church and see a brewing machine right where the stage used to be....

That is the bar for beer I guess...

Spinach dip and our beers. My beer was kinda interesting cuz it was the award winning summer only Lavender summer ale (the dark one is mine)....I know....Lavender flavored beer????

I thought the waitress took 2 photos for us but apparently the 2nd one was missing....oh well....

Billy's "Kobe" beef sandwich and my crab cake again.....

We tried to stop at downtown to see if we can take some photos, but the parking was crazy expensive and traffic was really bad....so at the end we gave up and I took this photo of Alcoa building from the car....oh well....end of 2nd day :)

Pittsburgh, 1st day.....

So here are the photos of Pittsburgh with our 1st day of stay. The whole purpose of the trip is to go to Xiao-Zhen's wedding, but since the tickets were super expensive I decided we should just go to a city I haven't been to and use the time efficiently....Well...Pittsburgh is really not all that big, so I guess with the time we had we did pretty well checking out diff. places....

The flight was a very tiring one and I almost didn't sleep at all through the whole night. We got to Pittsburgh about 10:30 in the morning, rented the car, and then started our trip by finding a restaurant for lunch. Thanks for the yelp application on my iphone, I was able to find this place for lunch with superb view of Pittsburgh downtown.....The name was "Grand Concourse" at Station Square which was developed from an old train station.

Oyster bar at the entrance....

It looks very classy inside....but we were sitting next to the windows that can look out to the downtown view next to the river....

This is the view we see from where we sat at....

Menu.....

The bread spread in pink was salmon spread....Billy said it was good. I liked their varieties of breads....

You can see the train in the back....this used to be a train station....

Billy's salmon steak, and my crab cake with shrimps....

We tried to go up on the bridge next to the restaurant to take pictures...turned out only ok....and the crazy wind gave me crazy hair styles....

Nice views of downtown from this elevated viewpoint at station square :)



Went straight to the hotel at Monroeville after we took pictures from the station square....I was so dead tired I actually slept for few hours before dinner...

We found this Italian place that is very small and looks like nothing impressive from the outside....turned out to be a pleasant surprise at the end....

Bread was given with this red olive oil...kinda interesting....

The menu...

You would not be able to tell how it looks like from the outside....

salad obviously...

Wedding soup....with meat balls, chicken, and those small grainy thing that I am not sure what they were....

Waitress did a good job taking photo for us I guess....since we looked so happy....

I didn't know my lamb ragu was gonna look like this...but it tasted quite nice I almost finished the whole thing. Billy ordered sea food pasta...

The almond cake didn't taste all that special but sweet....and I noticed the cute menu thingy before we left....Good dinner at an unexpected place....and that concludes our 1st day....