Pittsburgh - Day 2

On our second day in Pittsburgh, we got up early to beat the 95* heat. We tried taking the bus to a neighborhood called Oakland. We were a little worried because taking the bus can be complicated and we didn't have a map. Everything was really easy, though. This is the chapel at the University of Pittsburgh.






Next we went to the Cathedral of Learning, which is the University of Pittsburgh's humanities building. We were looking for the famous "Nationality Rooms" that are designed to reflect a certain architectural and cultural style. After a terrifying elevator ride to the 45 floor, where we could definitely feel the tower swaying, we found the visitor's center and got a map of the rooms. We went to all of the free rooms on the 3rd floor, which included the Austrian, Welsh, Ukrainian, Japanese, and Israeli rooms.


The Ukrainian room. I thought it was cool how they fitted the lumber together without using nails. Many of the rooms looked quite simple on first glance, but had a lot of interesting background information that made you understand them better.



We also went to the Phipps botanical gardens, where we saw ferns, orchids, bonsai, cacti, water gardens, and butterflies. This is the fern room.