resmarie

Time for a real treat, IKEA in Pittsburgh! IKEA is never so good at home in Sweden as it is abroad. It is great to see the Swedish flag outside the shop and the pictures of idyllic places in Sweden, preferably Smögen and the center of Stockholm. You can eat meatballs with lingonberry and know more about the products than those employed in the shop. We have grown up with assembling IKEA furniture, there’s nothing we can’t do.

We immediately stated that this must be an old IKEA store, it is not built as the new ones with parking space under the shop. We soon found that it was not very clean… and a few products were broken. The meatballs tasted nice but had a kind of chewy consistence and we missed the little Swedish flag on a toothpick that IKEA Chengdu usually has, according to Ingrid who has a genuine knowledge of one of her favorite shops in Chengdu, I have only been there once with her, many years ago.

Of course we managed to buy a lot of things in spite of our criticism. In fact, Ingrid is assembling a book shelf on the floor in this very minute. She even has a rubber hammer to put the different parts together.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/store/pittsburgh

Anyway, we spent a lot of time at IKEA and were in a bit of a rush getting out. IKEA is situated in a gigantic shopping mall and we found only dead ends driving about. I’m seldom lost but this time I even ended up driving in the wrong direction when we finally reached the right road.

Ingrid called the Kentuck Knob and postponed our visit with an hour.  Ingrid had booked tickets before and we were looking forward to our visit at one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses, http://kentuckknob.com/. The house was beautiful but rather small and a bit dark, the view over the hills amazing. Very good shop and a nice guided tour.

We drove through Ohiopyle State Park http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/findapark/ohiopyle/ and passed the Youghiogheny [yawki-gay-nee] River, neither easy to pronounce. The area is beautiful and you can do a lot of outdoor activities like whitewater rafting etc. It must be even more beautiful in the autumn when all the leaves turn into autumn colours.

After a short stop at our hotel in Chalkville, owned by Indians (from India) and with a nice view, we drove down to Uniontown to get something to eat. Almost a ghost town, we were amazed and drove the streets up and down to see the empty buildings from another time when the town was rich. Now nothing seemed to be in action. The theatre building was very elaborate and well- made from the art noveau period..

We decided to go somewhere fancier and went to http://summitinnresort.com/ and had decent food looking at the sunset.