After touring France for 6-weeks, it was a little hard, and a little weird, coming out of tourist-mode. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean the feeling where you wake up each morning hungry to see new things and appreciate them. At home, we generally just glaze over everything we normally see and never really appreciate it.


Source: knobil

My mom and sister decided to come up to Pittsburgh for a visit and I thought it was the perfect time to do some of the touristy things here in Pittsburgh that I've never done.

Arming myself with a few online guides (Iris' at BYOV, and Design Sponge's awesome guide) I made up an easy itinerary with plenty of downtime.

On Wednesday night when they arrived, we went to Point Brugges ("The Best Restaurant in Pittsburgh" according to Urbanspoon) for a late and delicious dinner.

On Thursday, we planned to stay around in the Oakland area with a quick tour of the Cathedral of Learning (aka, Hogwarts), the Heinz Chapel, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, with lunch at Ali Baba and dessert at Razzy Fresh.

It was a really fun day!

  
Source: brunkfordbraun / Curtis McCormick

The Cathedral of Learning is always interesting to visitors because it is so church-like and yet it isn't a church. The themed rooms are particularly interesting as well as the fact that they still have classes in them!


Source: zachstern

The Heinz Chapel is right next to the Cathedral of Learning so it's easy to stop in for a quick peek. The chapel is beautiful, and almost everyone I've ever met who has been married in Pittsburgh was married here.

Across the street is the gigantic structure of the Carnegie Museums - I believe there are four? I never knew that all the buildings were actually connected! After visiting so many amazing museums in Europe, I was prepared to be underwhelmed by the art collection, but I was actually impressed! They had a lot of great pieces, and it was a well-curated collection.

  

My mom was really interested in the Hand Made exhibit and I really enjoyed the crazy sculptures that were in there.



However, by far my favorite painting was the one above. When I saw it, it was only numbered, and I thought to myself how much it reminded me of the crazy trees I saw in the square in Saint Tropez. When I looked in the book to find out the artist and name, I was surprised to find it actually is a painting of that square in Saint Tropez!!

Today we plan on going to Falling Water and Mt. Washington, so I'll be updating with that soon!

Do you do tourist things in your hometown?