Carnegie Museums & Phipps Conservatory

The excellent breakfast at Holiday Inn Express got us ready for a full day in Pittsburgh.  Everyone really likes the motel here since the rooms have king beds and plenty of space.  It is nice to have a full breakfast to get the day started as well.  We are sharing the motel with a number of body building competitors.  It is pretty obvious who are the body builders and who are the teachers since the body builders have some serious muscle.

We arrived at the Carnegie Museums when they opened at 10 am and enjoyed the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Art.  At both museums, we saw glass objects going back thousands of years.  We were really impressed that glass objects were so well made and have endured for the thousands of years since.  We saw both molded and blown glass of great antiquity and appeared to have been made recently.  Although everyone was interested in different aspects of the museums since we all teach different things, everyone found things to enhance their teaching.  When we left the museums at 2 pm everyone wished there was more time to explore more.

Our next stop was the Phipps Conservatory where the group saw beautiful examples of the work of glass artist Dale Chihuly.  There was Chihuly glass in most rooms in the conservatory that was well integrated into the plants.  The forms of the glass fit the room as well as the colors in the plants.  It was a perfect pairing of glass art and plant displays.  One especially impressive display was made by Pittsburgh area students that used glass fragments from waste to produce stained glass representations of Pittsburgh scenes.  Colorful glass vases in the sunken garden area were a beautiful way for us to leave the conservatory.

We drove to Hofbrauhaus for dinner.  Most of us really enjoyed our dinner of authentic German food.  The wurst, scnitzel and sauerbraten were all well prepared and tasty.  We ate in the main room which was very noisy but the accordion played provided entertainment and even sang a birthday song for Wes.

We returned to the Holiday Inn Express to debrief and blog after our full day.  Everyone is looking forward to the final stop of the trip at the Pittsburgh Glass Center on Saturday.

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