Short winter road trip to Pennsylvania because we were too bored. The plan is to spend 2 nights in Harrisburg and Pittsburgh each and stopover 1 night at Penn State University.
We drove for approximately 4 hours on Sunday afternoon to Harrisburg. First pitch stop was at Corning's Popeye for mandatory fried chicken to start the road trip. The fried chicken this time was slightly better but a little overcooked.
We then continued our 3.5 hours drive to Harrisburg and arrived at around 5.30pm in the evening.
Day 2 - Jan 18
Weather at Harrisburg was pretty nice, slightly warmer than Ithaca. We first headed the the capitol building. Unfortunately, the capitol building was closed to visitors and guarded maybe due to the capitol incident weeks back.
We then drove up the hill, south of the city, for a decent overlook of the Harrisburg downtown. Nothing too crazy. It was a gloomy day so the lighting wasn't too good.
As there really isn't that much to see in Harrisburg, we decided to visit Hershey, a nearby city know for its Hershey chocolate. We drove for about 20 minutes and arrived at Hershey's HQ.
We bought some chocolates from Hershey's and also stopped outlet shopping area for some shopping. In the evening, we drove back to Harrisburg for some final night view of the capitol building.
Day 3 - Jan 19
Today we are heading to Pittsburgh from Harrisburg. It's about a 3.5 hours drive to the west.
We reached Pittsburgh at around 5pm. Kaixin was craving some Chinese food so we ordered a takeout from a popular Taiwanese restaurant. As we brought our food to our Airbnb, we were greeted by possibly the best view of any Airbnb I have stayed in. Below photo was taken from our balcony - we stayed at the Northshore up on the hill so we had the entire view of Pittsburgh city.
Day 4 - Jan 20
Started off the day nearly at noon. We headed straight to downtown Pittsburgh. First stop is a waffle brunch place. There were so many varieties of waffle that we could hardly choose.
After brunch, we took a short drive around downtown Pittsburgh and Point State Park. Due to the weather and Covid, the streets were mostly empty so there's really not much city vibe.
Next we crossed the bridge to South Shore and took the Duquesne Incline up to the top of the hill. It gave us one a majestic view of Pittsburgh downtown (higher than the Airbnb we stayed in).
We briefly walked around the South Hill (rich people district), we took the incline down and headed back to Pittsburgh downtown. We drove eastwards to Carnegie Mellon University, but honestly there's not much to see at the campus (Cornell is a lot bigger). In the evening, we headed back to Airbnb for dinner and relax.
Day 5 - Jan 21
As we did not want to drive 5.5 hours from Pittsburgh to Ithaca within one day, we extended one day and stopped over at University Park - a town where Penn State University is.
Not much activities for today, we mostly chilled in the hotel playing Dota and ordering food.
Day 6 - Jan 22
Time to head home. It was a wise idea to limit the driving to <4 hours a day as it's really tiring to drive longer than that.
First stop after checkout is to get some good brunch. Kaixin bought chicken salad and beef noodles and I had this gigantic Pretzel which was really fresh. Remind me of good old Germany days.
We took a final peek at Penn State University (not much to see either) and headed our way back to Ithaca.
Overall it was a good trip, a needed escape from rural Ithaca. However, road trip during winter is generally less enjoyable than spring/summer because we can't really spend time outdoors.
