Day 341 (Pittsburgh)

Pittsburgh is a hot and humid as every other place we've been to since Minneapolis. Thank God for air conditioning!

My friend Chris from seminary picked my mom and I up from the hotel this morning and was our tour guide for the day. We started with a visit to Pittsburgh Seminary.

This crazy looking thing was growing from the roots of a tree in the lawn. (You know I have to take pictures of the weird mushrooms I find!)

While we were there, my mom found a brochure for the Bible Lands Museum, apparently right at the seminary! They had some amazing artifacts there going back to 1,000 BCE and beyond! We even got to touch a piece of Herod's palace! OMG!!!!

There was a seminary student working there, and she even let us have a peek at the lab, where they were working with some stone artifacts on loan from the Smithsonian! To be completely honest, I was a little jealous because SFTS doesn't have anything like this... unless the rumors of ancient biblical texts turn out to be true...

After that, we went to the National Aviary. This place was really cool, a definite "must-see" for anyone visiting the area! There are several aviaries that you can walk through where the birds are flying around freely. It's a little bit small, but there was a lot of construction being done, and my guess is that in a few years, it could be twice the size that it is now.

I'm not sure what kind of birds these were, but it was a male and female with their three chicks. The tails of the adults were a blur of motion, constantly swinging side to side, it was kind of funny, and the chicks were peeping the whole time. The adorable family reminded me of the chicks from the Pixar movie "Up."

Some other pictures of the city.

I bought a finally bought a cell phone charger at Wallmart today, so call or text if you need something! (I don't usually support Wallmart, but AT&T wanted the price of the whole phone just to buy the charger, and I was like, "Oh, Hell no!!!")

PICTURE OF THE DAY: We had lunch at Primanti Bros. and this monstrosity is a Primanti Sandwich. It's a hamburger patty with tomatoes, french fries and cole slaw on top in between two thick slices of french bread served on a piece of wax paper. SOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!