Trip to Pennsylvania

Hello again,

I've been doing a little weekend traveling to balance my busy weeks and last weekend Zach and I adventured on a road trip through Pennsylvania. To start, we went to the city of Pittsburg because it was close to two major attractions we couldn't wait to see.

Pittsburgh was a very interesting place... I have never really seen anything else like it. Since it was a steel town it produced and shipped a lot of steel. No one really lived in the downtown core because it was too polluted. Now, it's a big sports town with a great football, baseball and hockey teams. The city is really starting to come to life with lots of restaurants and lots of entertainment revolving around athletics. But still no one actually lives downtown Pittsburg so there isn't much shopping, actually almost no shopping, downtown. There isn't even a grocery store.

There are two great universities that are famous for there tech programs, so that is what I feel will be the next big thing for Pittsburg. The picture below shows the amazing building they had on one of their university campuses. Another interesting thing is that there is almost no Taxi's because Uber has taken over. Better yet, they actually have Uber's self-driving cars on the road being tested there. Exciting progress in technology is happening all over the city.

We really enjoyed our stay here and we also felt very safe walking around the city. Everyone was very very nice! We stayed at the Renaissance Hotel which has an amazing location and is great, large, and clean hotel full of character.

We ended up catching a Pittsburgh Penguins game on the Saturday night and the new building that holds the arena is beautiful. The Penguins fans were so passionate!

The Sunday morning we booked a tour at the Frank Lloyd Wright Falling Water House. It was about an hour away from downtown Pittsburgh. You need to book this tour in advance to see the house. This house was built in the 1930s and is very innovative for its time. I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside the house but I can tell you it was beautiful. Everything is original inside so all the original design furniture is still in the same place that it was when the house was first built. The weather was perfect and being inside the house made you feel connected to the nature surrounding the property. Frank did a wonderful job bringing the outdoors inside the house.

After seeing the Falling Water House we drove another one and a half hours to a place I have always wanted to visit. It is called the Omni Bedford Springs Resort located just outside Bedford, Pennsylvania. This resort has a lot of history and dates back to 1805. The property is known for its 7 healing springs where the Native Americans used to channel the springs' healing powers and during the Civil War it was considered a peaceful piece of land where no fighting would take place. The resort was eventually built at this location and the space was added as a new healing place for the guests.

The hotel was restored in 1997 to almost exactly its original state.

The indoor swimming pool pictured below was the first indoor swimming in North America and it was filled by a natural spring below the pool and emptied and scrubbed daily. The pool is still spring water but they have added chlorine so they don't need to drain it daily.

This place is truly amazing and if you are looking for a new vacation spot to go and relax, this it it. But it is on the higher end of the budget. That is why we kept it to one night and it was the perfect end to our mini vacation.

Here are a bunch of photos from the resort. They are too pretty not to share, so here you go :)

Bedford Springs is a beautiful place and it is massive... I don't think I took pictures of nearly half of the resort.

I hope you enjoyed my little preview to the big state of Pennsylvania. I really enjoyed the road trip and found it fun to learn more about what is just south of the border from us here in Canada. :)

Until next time,

Kendra

xoxo