Last weekend, I ventured out for my first-ever Easter weekend away from home — off to the sweet spot of the 412, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
This was far from my first time in the ‘Burgh, though my traveling companion (my significant other) had never really been to the city, aside from driving through. I was eager and excited to show off as many things as I could about this wonderful city that I’ve been visiting since I was a child.
Continue reading “A Weekend in the 412: Easter in Pittsburgh”
Last month, I got a unique chance to cross something off my bucket list. Now, as someone with a decently lengthy bucket list, I’m really trying to live my life to the fullest and take any chance I can to grab life by the horns and really DO things.
One of the things on my bucket list, set up years and years ago, was to be a DJ.
Now, when I set that goal, it was one of probably a hundred I added to my list when I first started making a bucket list. I never had any plans of how I was going to make it happen – as I don’t with many of the items on my bucket list. But I had the chance, and I took it.
Last week, I read an article published in The Buffalo News that was titled “An Ode to Riding the Metro Bus,” written by Buzz News Columnist Mary Kunz Goldman. As someone who’s been riding the NFTA-Metro bus for essentially my entire life, it’s obviously a topic that piques my interest and I was curious to read the piece. Goldman’s piece highlights some of the positives of taking the metro bus, while realistically pointing out that the Buffalo transit system isn’t perfect.
As someone who’s been taking the bus daily for years, I really felt that this article just… didn’t do enough for me. I wanted to write my own piece, not just on the positives of the bus, but also on the negative aspects which Goldman really just touches the surface of.
Continue reading “A Fair Response to “An Ode to Riding the Metro Bus””
Just the other day, I read a “travel tips” article that talked about how to be a traveler, rather than a tourist, and tips for how to best experience a new place. I can’t find the article now (of course), but one of the tips was something like “Get to the highest point possible — after all, you want the first photo you share on social media to be a great landscape, and it’s a great way to get a scope of the land.” Anyway, I’ve seen multiple “travel tips” articles like this and I thought perhaps it’d be nice to do one of my own, based on my travel experiences.
Here’s the thing: it’s great to be a traveler, but it’s also great to be a tourist sometimes. There’s a reason that certain attractions are popular; often, they’re a once-in-a-lifetime experience that you shouldn’t so easily pass up just to avoid seeming like a tourist. So I’m not sure I buy into the whole “be a traveler, not a tourist” thing — that’s really just going off the negative connotations of the word “tourist,” and I’m pretty meh about that.
Alas, without further ado… my traveler/tourist (how about both?!) tips:
This past weekend, I visited Elmira, NY, roughly a 2.5 hour drive from Buffalo and in close proximity to the PA border. I’d been to Elmira before, but only briefly — as passing-through stops on the Greyhound bus en route to places like York, PA and Washington, DC — so it was nice to make it a final destination of sorts, and to see what the area had to offer.
thoughts of Melissa 