Travels with Jen: Jenworld to the Steel City

So it’s late Saturday evening and we’re in a hotel in Pittsburgh.  It has been a long day, people – a long, butt-numbing day in the car.

We got in the car at about 10:15, which was only 75 minutes later than we had originally planned.  That’s some sort of record for us, I tell you. 

The girls waited all of six agonizing minutes before they opened their backpacks to see what the Trip Fairy brought them.  (To those of you new to Jenworld, the Trip Fairy always brings new books and other fun stuff before a vacation.  The girls know it’s me, but that doesn’t diminish their fun one bit.)  The Trip Fairy outdid her winged self this time and we had almost complete silence and peace in the car for seven hours.

Seven hours?  Yes, seven hours.  For what was supposed to be a five hour drive.

What went wrong,  you ask?  Well it appears that the entire state of Pennsylvania is under construction.  Seriously.  Mile after painful mile of three-lane highways down to one barely-moving lane.  Luckily, there were plenty of unionized road workers in those closed-off lanes for me to look at.  And since they weren’t doing much of anything, other than standing around looking at the pavement, I could easily look at them without getting dizzy or anything.

So we pulled into the Steel City after 5:00.  We went to the science museum for a while and, when it closed at 7:00, grabbed some dinner downtown.  Pete had heard of a place called Primanti Brothers and wanted to eat there.  The best I can tell, the two main food groups offered at Primanti Brothers are gloppy cheez and deep fried potatoes.  They actually serve fries ON the sandwiches. 

(I have photos of this culinary perfection, however, I’m using my work laptop, which is a prissy fussy piece of electronic crap and every time I try to put photos into this post, the computer shuts all my windows down and then further punishes me by taking several minutes to open WordPress after that.  So, no photos tonight or possibly for the duration of this trip.)

(Dell Computers, if you’re reading this, I would be happy to be your spokeswhore in exchange for a super speedy laptop on which I could rave about your products when I blog.)

After dinner we checked into Hyatt Place, which is this amazingly cool new-ish spin-off chain of Hyatt Hotels.  (I swear I’m not shilling for them.)  Instead of decorating in High Laura Ashley, the hotel is Generic Modern, which I prefer to the usual florals and faux chintzes of many other hotels.  Plus, this is place is so clean that it actually exceeds my standards for what is required in a hotel. 

Pete took the girls down to the pool this evening, where they splashed around for an hour.  Hopefully, they burned off enough energy that they’ll go to sleep quickly tonight.  Whoever came up with the concept of hotel pools should get the Nobel Peace Prize.

The girls are now in their PJ’s and in bed watching one of the many DVD’s we packed.  Our room has a ginormous flat screen TV, on which they are getting their introduction to Season 1 of the Smurfs.  They are actually slack-jawed with awe.  Yes, ’80s TV shows rock.

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There were some rather humorous moments in the car.  We were somewhere still in the wilds of Virginia when Graceful asked, “What is thong underwear?”

I whipped my head around so fast that it nearly spun off my neck and asked, “What on Earth are you reading?”

She showed me the book, which was one I had bought for her.  Hmmm… I briefly explained thongs to Graceful.  Her eyes got huge and then she laughed at the idea of underwear with no back to it.  That was that.  Or so I thought.

Three hours later, apropos of nothing, she asked, “So what’s the point of thong underwear?”

I explained Visible Panty Lines and I suspect she’s still musing over that one.

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Later on, I took my customary Car Trip Nap, enjoying the comforts of the front passenger seat.  (I really and truly can sleep just about anywhere.)  Pete later relayed the following conversation to me:

Graceful, reading out loud a long passage from the book she was working on.

No one responds.  Graceful continues to read out loud.

Elegant, with a distinct tone of exasperation, “Graceful!  *I’m* playing with paper dolls.  *Daddy* is driving the car.  *Mommy* is taking a nap.  [Pause.]  NO ONE is listening to you.”

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In the morning, we head to Niagara Falls!