The City of Steel

In my high school, all seniors had to take a class on parenting. There was a project in this class that involved to taken care of an artificial infants, programmed to cry for attention at completely random intervals. On the other hand, if you were completely against taking care of said child and losing sleep, you were able to do an accessory project in which you babysat a child under the age of 10 for an entire weekend. As it so happens, my youngest cousin was 7 years old at the time, and obsessed with Legos. My aunt's told me that they were having a Lego convention in Pittsburgh that he really wanted to go to, and so it was a compromise between needing a class grade and visiting a new place with my younger cousin who I love to death.

And so, bearing that in mind, I took my first trip to Pittsburgh. Even though I had been to Europe and the Virgin Islands, I had never actually traveled that far west. This was my first time to do so, and although it isn't much, it's definitely something. The 4-Hour Drive was rough, but we made stops every hour for my cousin, so it was worth it and tolerable. We had Legos and video games to keep ourselves occupied on the voyage.

Since I was with my aunt and cousin, I didn't get to do a whole lot of sightseeing, but we still took a little drive around town as soon as we unloaded our bags in our hotel room. We were only staying one night, so we had to soak in as much of Pittsburgh as we possibly could in that time. We took a drive to see downtown Pittsburgh, with the bustling business district, before driving over to Heinz Field. Home of the Steelers, this massive Fieldhouse can see it several hundred thousand people. And it is just impressive from the outside.

After seeing a few sites downtown, we parked over to the Lego Expo. The sheer amount of Legos in that building had to be in the millions. Legos for sale, Lego buildings, Lego sculptures, Lego machines, pretty much everything you could think of was there. At this point in time, the Wii-U was a new invention as well, and they were demoing it using the new Lego game that was to be released the same year. My cousin had a field day, and truthfully, with my inner child, I did too.

Pittsburgh is home to one of the most expensive restaurants I've ever eaten that as well. I still ate meat back then, and I got a steak with fried mushrooms and potato wedges. Served with a small side salad, this meal at their famous fish market cost about $44. My cousin got chicken tenders and grilled cheese, and that alone cost him about $26. On the bright side, after dinner, we got to spend some time in the whirlpool and sauna inside a hotel. There were other kids there as well, and even though I was 18, I got to enjoy the same sense of fulfillment and relaxation that the other parents sitting in the hot tub watching their kids play in the pool did... Even though my cousin was not my own kid, he sure felt like it at times.

Later at night, we were tired to her hotel room, and our older cousin Thomas came to visit us. He lives maybe 20 miles down the road, and promised us a visit since we were in town for the first time. We wanted to go see him before we left at his house, but we just didn't have the time. I had school work to get done as soon as I got home, and my aunt had to work some weekend hours. We were tired early that night, getting a wonderful night's sleep 4 The Voyage ahead of us in the morning. We ate breakfast at the hotel's restaurant, packed our bags, drove past a few museums, and called it quits.

Nowadays, I’m working on becoming a better musician, writer, and Occupational Therapist. My cousin, at the time of writing this, is a second dan black belt in Tang-Su-Do, and a teenage computer geek. I’m still proud of him to this day for being true to who he is.

To life accomplishments complete in one trip, visit Pittsburgh, and play with a absurd amount of Legos. Something I would recommend to pretty much everybody. I know that I'll be visiting Pittsburgh again sometime, and I'll be looking to accept visitors when I go. Hopefully I'll see some of you there!