Monday, October 6, 2008

Happy Birthday, Part 1

This past weekend Mom, Kimberly and I whisked Megan off for a weekend full of surprises in Pittsburgh. Meg's birthday was on Saturday. She was kind of struggling with adding another year to her age, so we tried to convince her that age is just a number. Pittsburgh was happy to hear this since it was celebrating a birthday last weekend, too...its 250th!

We started out on Friday morning, leaving Bainbridge at 8:30. After a few pit stops (gas, dropping off Malachi, etc.) we picked Meg and Kim up in Grove City. As we got on the highway Mom suddenly realized that a trip to the bank was in order before we went much farther because she had forgotten to bring any money! We finally left Columbus (after another pit stop for brunch) at about noon.

We made it safely to Pittsburgh by mid-afternoon and met Kelsey at her house. Our first "appointment" (everything was a surprise to Meg, so we referred to all our plans as "appointments") wasn't until 6, so we decided a little snack would be nice. We went down to Station Square and had a couple of appetizers at Bar Louie before our first appointment...a Ducky Tour!

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, a Ducky Tour is a land-to-water tour of the city on a bus-turned-boat. I had never heard of such a thing, but apparently many other cities have similar tours. I would highly recommend taking a Ducky Tour if you are ever in Pittsburgh. It was a lot of fun and very informative.

Meg even got to drive the boat since she was celebrating a birthday. The tour guides gave her a really hard time about being such a terrible driver, although I think she did a pretty good job. She didn't wreck us anyway!

After the tour, we headed downtown to the cultural district to a gallery crawl. We saw some interesting art and a dance demonstration, but the highlight for me was the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute. They had an ice sculpture and some cakes on display and were offering $1 samples of various dishes. My favorite was Chicken Paprikash and now I need to find a recipe to try it myself.

Since the appetizers and $1 samples were basically all we had for dinner, we decided we needed a little dessert. We went back over to Station Square to Buca di Beppo's for some bruschetta and a delicious chocolate-caramel cake. Meg has been teasing me ever since that this baby is craving caramel!

By the time we finished dessert, it was about 11:00 and we were getting a little tired. We went back to Kelsey's and visited with her roommates just long enough not to be rude before crashing for the night. We all (except Meg) knew that another busy day was ahead of us and our beauty sleep was important!

To be continued...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

One thing you missed...mom pulling into oncoming traffic, ramping the median to get back in the correct lane and laughing hysterically about it.
-Meg

Unknown said...

Lovely, not to be critical but Pittsburgh has an H at the end!! Yes finally I can spell a word that you can't! My dream come true!

Kels

Hillary Jordan said...

I love this!!! I feel like I got to spend the weekend with Meg. If only she would start a blog! I can't wait to see part 2...
Hillary

J, H, A, M and O said...

Glad you all had a fun girly weekend. Happy Birthday Meg.

Erik, Erin, Malachi, Elliott and Jonas said...

Thanks, Kels....I fixed my spelling mistake!!

Sharp Family said...

o my! megan driving a tour boat? that's a tad scary! looks like you all had a blast!