Last weekend’s Pittsburgh trip: not much to talk about.
Saturday morning, a package I’d ordered arrived: new
Teva sandals. I put
them on and went for lunch at the
Prudential mall food court, which was
overrun with costumed attendees of the
Anime Boston convention. Pretty
surreal.
Full Photoset
Grabbed my bag and left home, but on the way out, I received another
package I’d been waiting for: a second battery for my video camera.
Threw that in my bag and made my way to
Logan.
The flight was fine except the descent into Pittsburgh was bumpy due to
wind. The woman next to me squealed on touch-down. Weather a balmy 82
degrees but overcast.
Hit a grocery store that Inna wanted to visit, then dinner at Maharaja,
an Indian restaurant tucked inside a Days Inn by the highway. It was set
in a long-abandoned ballroom, with used dinner plates littering several
of the many empty tables. To my horror, Inna violated my first rule of
Indian-never order the buffet!-and it delivered in spades.
Spots in the steam table labeled rice and naan were empty, and
what food there was looked like it had been sitting on the Sterno for
months. At least they didn’t serve Goat Bone Curry like Ajanta used
to!
Since Inna’s mother was traveling, we stopped by to feed her cats Theo
and Pumpy, then called it a day.
Sunday was Easter, so I tried to get Inna to sample a chocolate bunny,
but she refused. We spent a mostly lazy day doing not much of anything,
since most places were closed for the holiday. We walked around
Shadyside and had ice cream at
Oh Yeah!, then drove around at random,
ending up having a nice walk around the reservoir at the summit of
Highland Park.
After feeding mom’s cats, we went to a place called Thai Cuisine on
East Liberty, which was unmemorable, then home so that Inna could study.
Monday I walked down to the
Fifth Third Bank and snagged some small
bills, then off for ice cream at
Klavon’s. Drove around
Lawrenceville,
and saw three deer in
Allegheny Cemetery. Back in
Squirrel Hill, we
stopped at Radio Shack to pick up
Livestrong wristbands for the cats to
play with, and chocolate for us.
Dinner was a burger at
the Elbow Room in Shadyside, which wasn’t bad,
then we went home and played
“Wits & Wagers” and some
“World of Goo”
game on Inna’s
Wii.
Tuesday I packed up and we hit the
Waterworks Mall where Inna shopped
for clothing while I picked up some
Eneloop batteries and found a kitten
to play with at
Petco. We made our way out to
Moon Township and had a
tasty lunch at
Mad Mex before saying our goodbyes at the airport.
All told, it was a very low-key visit, which seems pretty typical of
Pittsburgh. Atypical, however, were the mediocre meals, since my
experience has been that the thing Pittsburgh usually gets right is its
food. But the weather was pretty gorgeous for early April, which made a
nice change from the freezing cold of my previous two visits. Mostly it
was good to see Inna, since she’s been buried up to her eyeballs all
year with work for the one-year sustainability MBA program she’s
enrolled in.