Pittsburgh

We had a clear and sunny sky on Sunday, so we drove to Pittsburgh for the day. Pittsburgh is located where the Ohio, Monongahela and Allegheny rivers all meet. Downtown Pittsburgh has 15 major bridges crossing the rivers (with something like 720 bridges within the city limits). The rivers are the second busiest inland ports in the USA.

First stop was at The Strip - a street downtown with some cool shops and markets. We grabbed a coffee and biscotti (Pittsburgh is known for its biscotti, really just a biscuit)and had a walk around The Strip.

We then drove across the rivers to ride the Duquense Incline - a rail cart that takes you to the top of Mount Washington. There were some beautiful views from the top.

A cart going up the incline

The view

Looking down as we are going up

After riding the cart back down, we drove to the top of the second incline in Pittsburgh - the Monongahela Incline and walked around the top of Mount Washington. The views were really nice, and have been voted the second best views in the USA. Apparently these carts were used for the filming of Flashdance too!

You can see 4 of the 15 downtown bridges in this shot. Normally a water fountain would be running in the circle.

We rode the cart to the bottom of the hill to Station Square, and had lunch on the river front at a pub. We browsed some shops, rode back up to our car and went for a drive through downtown Pittsburgh.


We then went back to The Strip to get some fresh seafood for dinner (where Kristy and another unfortunate toilet experience - a Chinese lady thought she would like to share her bathroom shenanigans with me, but we wont go in to details!)


We then drove through the historic Mexican War Streets, which housed some really old town houses, before heading home and calling it a day.

Penn's Caves

Friday night we went out for dinner to the Outback restaurant - a supposedly Australian restaurant, although the boomerang and koala pic's on the wall was about all there was Australian about it! It was a nice dinner though.

Saturday morning we drove 31/2 hours East to Central Pennsylvania's Penn Caves. Penn Caves is an underground cavern with a river running through it. The cavern is believed to be 30 million years old, and is full of stalagmites and stalactites. For some strange reason, the Americans feel compelled to name every rock formation they find, even though they look nothing like it. For example, the Statue of Liberty stalagmite is below.

Yep - this is supposedly the Statue of Liberty formation

The opening of the underground cavern

After the cavern tour, we went on a safari like tour through the property - they have hundreds of animals including black bear, white and black wolves, bobcat, elk, deer (including white deer), Texas long horn cattle and bison. We also saw a ground hog (which we see all the time now, especially running up the side of the road), chipmunks along with birds and ducks.

A white wolf - this one was the dominant male

White deer - isn't it gorgeous?

We learnt some really interesting stuff from the guide, who is also the animals vet.

* Deer shed their antlers every year. They have only just started growing back now, and grow between an inch and an inch and a half daily

* Elk antlers grow faster - around 2 inches daily

* Sometimes male bears don't go in to hibernation - instead they try and find a female to mate with. If the female is nursing a cub, the male will try and kill it.

* Bear have babies premature -and only carry them for 6 weeks before giving birth

* All wolves have yellow eyes with a black ring around them, even if they are cross-bred.

Bison

We had a great day, and the animals were so cute, especially the bears who looked so playful and cuddly, although wouldn't like to be in the cage with them!

The black bear was showing off!

Oh! And we saw a moose too! Ha! Ryan bought this hat for the boys to wear wakeboarding!

Philadelphia is Like Another Planet Man - Welcome to Mars!

This is how we were greeted by some freaky looking guy in massive over sized bright orange sunglasses, after another freaky guy was screaming obscenities to himself and then threw a few our way cause we were laughing at him.
Yep, Philadelphia is full of weirdo's and wacko's, but it is a cool city and has some interesting sites like the Liberty Bell and those famous stairs that Rocky ran up.
We also had our first stunning weather - 80F or about 22C.

Lucky there were 'Emergency Pull Off's' for the traffic on the way!

We left home before 5am Saturday morning. The drive was only supposed to be about 6 hours long, however, as we were entering the city, we hit a massive traffic jam which we were stuck in for over an hour, making our trip 7hrs long.

Ryan in front of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge

After checking in, we caught the subway downtown and walked to the Italian Markets, and had (a rather average) lunch at a seafood shop. We walked back up through town to Old City, where you can find the Liberty Bell (which gained a large crack in it after ringing it for George Washington's Brithday), Liberty Hall (where the first American congress was held - Philadelphia was the first Capital City of the USA, but only lasted 10 years) through to the oldest continually occupied residential street in the USA and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

Kristy with the Liberty Bell - notice the crack in the bell?

The 'Love' statue in Philadelphia City Centre

We caught the subway back to the City Centre, and looked at the City Hall, Chinatown and the Reading Terminal Markets, the largest markets in the USA. After walking around for a while we ducked back to the hotel, before having dinner at a nice organic cafe in University City.

Sunday, we walked to 30th st Station (train station), had a look around and some brekky. We caught the subway to the City Centre and walked down to the Philadelphia Art Museum - where we found the infamous stairs Rocky ran up. After we had our photo with Rocky, ran up the stairs and yelled 'Adrian - I done it!' we walked back to the Reading Terminal Market and had some Indian for lunch, before catching the subway back to our car for the trip home.

Rocky Kristy and Rocky Ryan with Rocky

Adrian - I done it!

Splash Lagoon

Monday night, with not much else to do, we decided to hit Splash Lagoon - Erie's local indoor water slide park. There weren't many people there at all, so we never had to line up.

The Giant Bucket tipping over

The slides were really cool - some of the started off inside the building, went outside the building, then came back in again. Other ones had a section in the middle of the slide kind of like a whirlpool, where you would go round and round until you lost speed and went down the middle. Another one has a speed of 40mph (or 60km).
There was also this giant bucket on top of a massive kids play land (which we went up of course!) - every 15minutes or so, this giant bucket would fill up and an alarm would sound throughout the building. Then it would tip over and pour water on everyone in the play land - it held heaps of water too. We will put some photos up soon!

Inside Splash Lagoon

Some of the slides go outside the building

Country Side PA

This weekend was a relatively relaxing one compared to previous weekends.
After a big night on Friday night (we went to our Friday night Happy Hour special with Cheryl, then out for more drinks with Ryan's mates from work), Ryan was pretty hungover on Saturday which made for fun driving!
We made our first stop at Meadville, an old country town, to visit the longest continuous market house in Pennsylvania. It took us a whole 2 minutes to walk through. So we kept driving on the hunt for some scenic waterfalls. The country side really is beautiful in PA. We didn't find any waterfalls, but we found some really nice rivers and creeks, as well as an awesome scenic outlook. When we got home we went to our local to order our new favourite and ever popular food - chicken wings - for dinner.

A nice creek we found

This was on the banks of the creek - nice huh?

Our Beast

Ryan on top of the scenic lookout

On Sunday, we had all intentions of going to Pittsburgh for the day, however, the rain, snow and extremely bad fog stopped us from going there. So instead we drove to a little country town to visit Fallingwater.
Fallingwater is a house designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, about 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The house is built right alongside a really pretty creek, and part of the house was built over a waterfall! It was a beautiful house too (giving us some ideas for when we get home!).

Maine via Salem

Saturday we drove 40 minutes North to Salem - the infamous witch town. It turns out that the witch craft was a whole lot of hysteria and there was no witch craft - surprise!

We visited the Witch Dungeon Museum, which wasn't really a museum at all, but had reconstructed the cells that the accused would have been held in back in those days, some smaller than a phone booth! In total, 19 people were hung and one man crushed to death all accused of witchcraft.

A scene from the Witch Dungeon of a man being crushed to death for witchcraft.

After Salem, we drove another 2 hours North to Portland, Maine. Portland was a really cute town. We stopped and had some lunch and a browse around, before taking a scenic drive another 1 hour north.

We got home fairly late, so after a yummy bowl of Pho we went to bed.

Sunday morning we went for a drive to Cambridge to have a look at Harvard University and Harvard Square. From here we went to the oldest baseball stadium in the USA - home of the Boston Red Sox.

Ted Williams - one of the best ever players for Boston Red Sox

Fenway Park - Home of the Boston Red Sox and the oldest baseball field in the USA.

After another stroll through Little Italy, and purchasing some yummy cheese and antipasto, we made the 8 hour drive home.

Cheers!

Thursday afternoon we drove 8 hours to Boston, Massachusetts.
Friday morning we spent the day walking the Freedom Trail - a trail through Boston that links the revolutionary historical sights. The day looked so nice, that we didn't take our winter jackets - big mistake! Although sunny, it was freezing! Anyway, the trail starts in Boston Common - Americas' oldest public gardens (which are over 100 years older than Australia!). We made our way via ancient graveyards, the town hall, to the downtown market place.

Paul Revere - one of the founders of the American Revolution. His house is also the oldest house still standing in Boston (1680).

We browsed around and stopped at the replica 'Cheers' bar, that the TV show Cheers is based around. We kept walking through the Northern end of town, otherwise known as Little Italy (which hosts the oldest tavern and restaurant in the USA), through to the Bunker Hill Monument. We climbed 294 stairs to the top for an awesome view of the city.

Bunker Hill Monument

We then walked back to the harbour front in search of a seafood restaurant being that it was good Friday. We had the best clam chowder ever which is served at all the Presidential conventions. $100 later, we walked to the original Cheers bar for a few more drinks (via a couple of Irish pubs to get out of the freezing cold).

Where's Wally? Ryan with the Cheers gang

We then went back to the food markets downtown (via some more Irish Pubs) and had a lobster bisque bread bowl for dinner.
We saw another bar was having an Easter egg hunt and 2 Playboy Bunnies, so we went there after dinner for more drinks (it was an expensive day!). In the end, the Playboy girls were quite average, we had no money and couldn't be bothered waiting for the Easter egg hunt, so we caught the subway home.

Later that night...

Wardy had a little spewy!

Trono

This weekend we ventured North, across the border (via some very friendly customs people - note the sarcasm) to Trono. We left home at about 8am Saturday morning and arrived at our very swish hotel, the Marriott - which we got for an absolute bargain - at 11am. We walked through town, and went to Chinatown for some lunch, including good old dumplings. Toronto's Chinatown is the largest in North America. After we stuffed ourselves silly, we made our way to the CN Tower - the tallest free standing building in the world.

Ryan in front of CN Tower

Firstly, we went up an elevator that looks outside as you go up - this took us up 342m to a lookout with some amazing views. There was also a glass floor that looked straight below you.

Kristy on the glass floor of CN Tower

Next we went up to a height of 447m to the worlds highest man made observation gallery for 360 degree views for up to 260km away.

View from CN Tower

We then went to look at Fort York, a fort that was built in the 1700's for battles, but it was really boring. So we stopped off at a bar for a couple of drinks.

A policeman of horseback booking a car - would love to have seen that chase!

We then thought we would head down to Air Canada Stadium to try and score some tickets to the sold out ice hockey game - Toronto Maple Leafs V Pittsburgh Penguins. We approached some scalpers. A crowd of them hovered around us until they realised we weren't prepared to pay $500 for tickets! We settled for watching the game at a bar.
After a few drinks, we caught the underground subway home.

Sunday we caught the subway to some markets downtown only to realise they were closed Sundays. So we walked through PATH - Toronto's underground network - to get to the Kensington Markets across the other side of town.

PATH facts:
* PATH is the largest underground shopping complex with 27 km of shopping arcades.
* More than 50 buildings/office towers are connected through PATH. Twenty parking garages, five subway stations, two major department stores, six major hotels, and a railway terminal are also accessible through PATH.
*There are more than 125 grade level access points and 60 decision points where a pedestrian has to decide between turning left or right, or continuing straight on.

We walked through the markets, then caught a Street Car (tram) and the subway to the top of town to Casa Loma - a castle in the middle of town.

Casa Loma

Casa Loma was built for a local Canadian man, and completed construction in 1914. It cost $3.5 million and took 300 men 3 years to construct . We got to explore secret passageways, towers and an 800ft underground tunnel that led to the stables. It was pretty cool. Turns out the guy who owned it went bankrupt and now the council own the property.

After a pizza for lunch we drove back home (via the even friendlier Customs people).