parents came too- Mom is from the area (Mars! My mom went to Mars High) and they were celebrating their wedding anniversary. Needless to say, traveling with mes parents upped the posh quotient of my trip considerably. The other ceramics students came by train and slept 10 to a room, like a bunch of drunk puppies. We stayed at the conference hotel and ate really well. Mom took us around Pittsburgh, visiting her nursing school, Carnegie Mellon, and other areas. Pittsburgh was great- I loved the way the city looked and felt. Lots of ethnic diversity, great restaurants, culture, shopping...
But the best things of all for me were the markets in the warehouse district. We went to a fish market that was gigantic, filled with fish of every sort and customers everywhere. We noticed that they were serving lunch- they had a sushi bar and a fried-fish extravaganza complete with macaroni and cheese and huge french fries. We ordered fish and chips, macaroni and cheese, and buttery mixed vegetables and ate them. There were at least 50 people eating in the upstairs dining room, and a line out the door for the fried fish... and it was just as good as it looked and smelled. The fish was perfectly fresh, the batter thin, salty, and crisp, and the macaroni oozing yellow cheese sauce, topped with buttered breadcrumbs. Ony 100000 calories per serving, but we walked it off later.
There is simply nothing in Wichita that compares to an east-coast fish shop.
