Category: Travel

The Phipps Spring Show with Hays LAS

Post author By kmarieclark
Post date March 3, 2014
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Hays Landscape Architecture Studio

has prepared a melodic transformation of the well-known Phipps Conservatory in downtown Pittsburgh. The exhibit opens the morning of March 22nd for crowds to enjoy the sensory sights and sounds. Hays has infused blossoms with the blues in the sunken garden swamp. In the Palm Room the designers give a whimsical nod to the swing era of the 1930’s. Transcend further down the path of music history and experience the loud and colorful world of rock n’ roll. You will find classical music in the formal Broderie Room, a location popular for proposals and weddings. A peek below, with Phil’s sketch of The Grand Crescendo in the Palm Room, offers a hint of what more you will find over the rainbow.

Palm room perspective final ~

From Phipps’s Site : An Invitation to Join us March 22nd

Spring Flower Show

March 22 – April 20, 2014

Drawing inspiration from Pittsburgh’s musical soul, Phipps comes alive with melody and rhythm

Take a toe-tapping journey through a musical world where melodies bloom like flowers. This year, Spring Flower Show combines music and garden design for a sensational new exhibit filled with sights, sounds and scents that are sure to have you singing.
From one room to the next, musical genres from swing and big band to blues and rock ´n roll will be showcased through whimsical sculptures made out of up-cycled instruments; surprising planters like an upright piano; and carefully orchestrated plantings designed to mimic the rise and fall of musical notes as they move up and down the scale. Popular songs will also be piped through some of the rooms, adding to the multi-sensory experience.
The stars of the show, of course, will be the thousands of vibrant tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and other seasonal favorites, in addition to some new highlights, including several varieties of primula, foxtail lilies and Himalayan blue poppies. Arranged in spectacular groupings according to color and theme, each plant will be carefully placed to add scope to and enliven each scene, from blue and purple flowers representing the blues genre, to rainbow-hued blooms coming together to form the bars of a larger-than-life xylophone.
Spring Flower Show, designed by Hays Landscape Architecture Studio, Ltd., runs through April 20. Exhibit hours are 9:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. daily and until 10 p.m. on Fridays. Admission is $15 for adults, $14 for seniors and students, and $11 for children (ages 2 – 18). Members and children under 2 enter for free.

Presenting Sponsor
Photos © Paul g. Wiegman

Tags Phipps Conservatory, Spring Show Pittsburgh

Poetry Travel

A Second Life – Green Mountain Coffee

Post author By kmarieclark
Post date January 15, 2014
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A Second Life – Green Mountain Coffee

Off their main streets

Woven through the state

Vermont basks in astute minds.

All that goes, all that moves,

Lily flower thoughts are allowed here.

Here, on a painted porch

Heavy brackets lifting an ancient roof

Painted cedar shingles

At the brow of the green mountains

Mansard roofs, cupola peaks are

Standing guard over

Everything that will be accepted.

.

Try the Green Mountain Coffee yourself and enjoy the tour through Waterbury’s historic train station!

Poetry Travel

Woodstock Rests

Woodstock Rests

Woodstock rests

In the hollows of Lincoln.

The inn and brewery serves the thru-hiker double rye

Greeting the kids

Walking from Georgia to Maine

When there are only four hundred miles to go.

We recommend Woodstock Inn and Brewery!

About Me Community Travel

Narcisi Winery & Finding Family

Post author By kmarieclark
Post date October 10, 2013
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I was happily surprised to discover that the family of Narcisi Winery has roots that come from the same town my great-grandparents were from!

~ Giulianova in the Abruzzo area of Italy ~

I attended a wedding shower here this past spring. The winery resides in a lovely setting in Gibsonia PA, just north of Pittsburgh. Learning about where the Narcisi family was from is a coincidence because my family will be traveling to Italy next year to find our relatives. The task is taking longer than I anticipated. Our family name must have been changed from Campetti to Competti at some point. My great grandmother’s family name was Stellarini. I’ve contacted the Registration Office, or the ‘Ufficio Anagrafe” of Giulianova to try to find records of my grandparent’s siblings. My idea is that I can trace down lineage to find someone we can visit today! If anyone else has any ideas to offer I’d love to hear them!

~ The lovely seaside community of Giulianova ~

Travel

Syracuse, NY

Sitting outside of Kitty Hoynes enjoying the architecture of Armory Square.

~Syracuse University Campus

Vacation began on a July Thursday. We headed east from Ohio, crossed West Virginia, went north through Pennsylvania and found ourselves in New York by noon. Four states in a morning. Luckily for us we found an impromptu farmers market table set up at a rest stop off of the turnpike. Fresh blueberries and cherries paired well with a store-bough pizza. We stopped for the night in Syracuse NY and noticed a heavy Irish influence in the food and brew options. In Armory Square many older adults were enjoying the shops, sights and sounds of a weekend to come. The Blue Tusk offered sidewalk seating outside of their interesting building with phone booth nooks and crannies.

I visited with two ladies involved with Syracuse’s Architecture department about what Syracuse University is doing to actively improve the connectivity of the town to design. They introduced me to the work of Architect Rasem Kamal. I was also able to read the department’s Graduate Level publication called ‘Graduate Sessions.’ The print highlights a famous architect in an interview session that is documented and distributed in an effort to partake in a different perspective from these well-known practitioners. Bravo on the Preston Scott Cohen and Aureli + Tattara Dogma publications!

From here my husband and I headed further north, and into New England.

Tags Armory Square Syrcuse NY, Graduate Sessions Syracuse University

Food & Exercise Travel

From Ohiopyle to Pittsburgh – 85 Miles by Bike

Post author By kmarieclark
Post date July 3, 2013
No Comments on From Ohiopyle to Pittsburgh – 85 Miles by Bike

Technically my title is wrong. It should take about 75 miles to get from one destination to the other, but I’m including the extra to account for the necessary back and forth trip we biked from Cedar Creek campsite to an evening brew at the Trailside Restaurant and Pub Saturday night. The trip between Ohiopyle and Pittsburgh began earlier for my brother who took off from Pittsburgh Thursday morning on the Great Allegheny Passage – GAP trail. He made it to Ohiopyle Friday and Phil and I joined him for the return trip. We biked a longer trip last year and decided to shorten the mileage per day in order to incorporate more sight-seeing along the way. Connellsville was hosting a river-side arts festival, breakfast at Gary’s Chuck Wagon Restaurant surprised us with great coffee and dense donuts, and at the terminus Point Park in Pittsburgh we were greeted by a fantastic thunderstorm!

It’s been a wet June. We were more fortunate on the return trip to find an underpass, or to be sleeping beneath a lean-to when storms crossed the trial. Beginning in Ohiopyle Saturday morning was bright and sunny. Outdoor adventurists were crawling over the rock studded river sides, cyclists were gazing to the cascading falls from the bridges, and we were partaking in the breakfast bar at Falls Market and Restaurant. After scampering along the water’s edge ourselves we hit the trail and took the scenic ‘GAP’ bridge over the river. We followed the Youghiogheny River as it wove at a downward grade through the tulip forest. Ferns feathered the hillside as brush beneath the many single-filed tree trunks. Waterfalls generously poured into the thickening river, turning over stair-stepped banks of rock. We were shaded, the trail muddier than usual, and we could hear a few raindrops falling late from the previous night’s storm. From Mile 70, to 80, to 90, we rode mostly in quick conversations side by side at 13 mph. Then, at other times, in the pure silence of nature rushing by.

GAP Trail Maps

We set-up camp at Cedar Creek for free. With a hikers hut and restrooms available we were set for the night. Sharing the campsite with only four other campers made for a very peaceful evening. Well, that’s what we thought until we had a rude awakening.

Storms rolled around us through the night, but that was nothing compared to the sound of the train! Three or more times a thumping, screeching, rambling distraction made noise like we were about to be run over. This was the music of progress I suppose, the only sound cutting through the crickets and raindrops in an otherwise secluded (feeling) place.

As I mentioned earlier, before turning in we biked to the Trailside Restaurant and Pub in West Newton, PA. We enjoyed fresh food and bottled beer along with another small rain storm. The Pirates were playing and the mood on the deck porch was easy-going.

We woke up as well as we could and biked the four miles back into West Newton where we found coffee at Gary’s Chuckwagon restaurant. The placed filled up as Sunday service concluded and as we left. We were only thirty miles out of downtown Pittsburgh.

The map below is a piece of what can be found on the GAP website. It details the places along the trail for bikers and hikers alike to enjoy between Greenock and Pittsburgh, PA. We were in luck pulling into little Boston that a bike shop / kayak and canoe rental had WD-40 to help with my brothers’ squeaking bike chain. They were really helpful and I told the man there that I’d blog about his shop. The place is called Ted’s Peddler’s Village, and the brochure is here:

~Trail side rentals near Boston PA aerial below~

We felt so close to Pittsburgh, but drove through the pathways around McKeesport, up and over the bridges crossing railway tracks near Duquesne, and into Homestead for quite a few more miles.

The trail at Homestead is a very nice trail running between the river and new development. The path alone made me want to live there. The iron fencing running for miles would make iron workers drool. The Three Rivers Heritage Trail criss-crosses the GAP here, and offers bikers another reason to bike in Pittsburgh. The GAP leads to the rear side of Kennywood and skims the side of Sandcastle Water park, teasing hot cyclists as we drive on to finish our ride. And, finish our ride we did, just before the thunder show. We rode through the raindrops and circled the Point. We stopped quickly for pictures before the fountain and found cover beneath the concrete shell overpass at the point with many others as the storm passed.

A good ride, good company, and a great accomplishment achieving 85 miles feels good for a weekend!

Tags Bike Trail PA, Biking the GAP trail Ohiopyle to Pittsburgh

Travel

In the West Virginia Mountains

Post author By kmarieclark
Post date May 1, 2013
No Comments on In the West Virginia Mountains

The Purple Fiddle, Mountain Made, & Tip Top make Thomas, WV a place of great rest and refreshment in between West Virginia’s beautiful opportunity for hiking in the mountains.

Create West Virginia published a great publication a few years ago that pursued the talent and human capital of West Virginia. One article featured the Purple Fiddle, as you may read below.

For the Full Pamphlet : createwv-paper

The Washington Post also recently highlighted Thomas, WV in an article urging urbanites to seek out the galleries, walk the steps along a forgotten railway, and be apart of the night life budding in the mountains. I can’t wait to visit this little jewel of a town in the lovely mountains again soon.

Tags Purple Fiddle, Thomas West Virginia

Poetry Travel

Bologna, Italy

Madonna di San Luca

Fatto

To do as those in Bologna do.

Ancient archways hold a long arched hallway along the street

lead to San Luca church, a place the provides a space

for meditation, a journey there.

Bologna was built for people needing to get somewhere.

It wasn’t some place for a tourist

but it shows how Italians judge time.

It is a city of movement, of hallways and

few open piazzas where the old tower of Bologna stands

in the center.

At 7:30 the large grafittied iron shutters roll down

the crazy long hallways close the city in on us

make us lost in a labyrinth of running.

Poetry Travel

Venice Night

Venice Night

He walked with a wet leg into the Museum of Modern art

with me

women were sewing large sails at a huge scale

in painting

men were carved, forever carrying the weight of a detailed pediment

their muscular bodies know strength.

There are women too, in these sculptures

stepping off stone bowls to show muscle and body contortion

just holding on.

In the evenings the brightly lit windows

reveal frescos on the ceiling

plaster molded details in the rafters

the reflective waters bounce the dinner scenes

on the canal and through out the entire city

looking up at Venice

from the view of an ocean.

Poetry Travel

Venezia

Venezia

Venice is a rubbed painting

that reveals a lost era.

Water floods and recedes

marking its territory in deliberately carved ripples

of marble.

The terrazzo floors are sloping

the timber structures giving out

falling with five stories weight into the Adriatic.

Symphonies play in San Marco

it’s the end of the world – a last show,

to remember.

For six dollars you can stay at a table where they serve coffee or wine.

In other places

up against the canal, where there are small plazas

and most often restaurants, you can eat

an early pizza for lunch, have some wine.

The city is a mask of skin with hollow eyes

pull your face from the lime light

hide behind the curtains, your nose last to leave.

What’s left in the shell of the blue light?

A city of fantasy and flying creatures

vendors willing to talk in English and Italian in waves if

you make a drawn-out purchase.

Here, our seams were open to one anther – I

bartered for a scarf, my husband found a museum with French directions

yelled from a window, then

he slipped into the canal trying to make me laugh.