Post Pittsburgh

Feeling: Regret
Now Playing: "Empty"- Metric

I don't recall ever going on vacation with my parents without getting lost. Rest assure, it took us awhile to find our hotel in the outskirts of Pittsburgh. The drive wasn't very interesting except it was raining like crazy for majority of the time; abit scary actually. I wanted to sleep for the most part but failed. It seems though whenever I do drift off, we end up stopping or reaching our destination, and I can't fall back asleep again.
The town we stayed in was called Carnegie, located on a mountain. We finally found Radisson on top of a hill and got into our room around 11. I made some tea and watched Letterman for awhile before my dad turned it off. I had a hard time falling asleep; my parents' snoring being a major cause. After talking on the phone and putting on some music, I was finally able to sleep; by that time, it was probably 3 already.

I woke up at 9 the next morning. After checking out, we headed into Pittsburgh for an exciting day under the rain. We drove down Forbe Ave. and passed University of Pittsburgh and its famous Tower of Learning, the Andy Warhol Museum, Carnegie Hall, and finally Carnegie Mellon itself.
The building looked janky and was an unpleasant beige color with green trim things. The insides weren't better off either. Pittsburgh, being an old mining town, might contribute to why the insides of CMU looked like the inside of an old factory.
The only good building was the Social Science building, which had nice aesthetic appeals and could pass off as a museum. The recreation/food hall wasn't too bad either. I really liked the wall mural on the 2nd floor, which was an aerial view of Pittsburgh drawn in pencil that extended across the entire sets of walls. Around 12, We had brunch at the 2nd floor dining room; it was quite tasty, but probably because I was starving at that point from not having had any food all day.
Afterwards, we continued our tour of the campus. My dad wanted to go into every building and check out the class rooms. That became very tedious and boring after a certain point, but fortunately the campus was fairly small, and we actually covered all the grounds by the afternoon.
The most depressing moment of the day happened in the dining hall. On my way out after lunch, I picked up a student publication to discover the saddening news:

Friday April 21
concert: Phantom Planet & The Secret Machines, CFA Lawn, 7:30 pm,
FREE!

I've been wanting to see Phantom Planet for awhile, and I probably missed my most perfect chance. Secret Machines is a decent band too for the most part, I probably would have enjoyed them also. But no, life has to be hard.

I was pretty tired by the afternoon; it seemed as though I've been walking around forever. On our way out of the campus, we passed by the Conservatory and decided to stop by since there was an orchid show going on. Walking through the green house and taking pictures of flowers made me feel relaxed and happy. This was probably the best part of the day. Afterwards, we drove into the city and walked around before it started raining again. The rain was a killer, killing off our motivation to do anymore exploring; Off we went, good bye Pittsburgh. I'm not sure if I would be back ever again, but the experience hasn't been too terrible.