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”
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.
After planning a trip for so many months, it’s always a little depressing when you return home and realize it’s over. That’s how I felt after returning from my trip to Detroit and Windsor. That trip was an incredible adventure that saw me visit many new places, including the state of Michigan for the first time, as well as some new parts of the province of Ontario.
My first-ever trip to Philadelphia, PA was a short trip filled with a few bus issues, a good hockey game, plenty of US history and some beautiful fall foliage.
I already wrote about my struggles with Megabus over this trip, but to sum it up: the schedule changed, and I was never informed, so we left Buffalo about two hours later than I anticipated. I didn’t sleep at all on the bus ride, which was quite miserable, and we made two stops, arriving in the City of Brotherly Love around 7 a.m.
Continue reading “The City of Brotherly Love – Philadelphia, October 2014”
thoughts of Melissa 