4 dead in Ohio

Welcome to Day 5 of our Travel Blog. There are a lot of pictures, again!

After leaving our lovely room at the Arcade, we drove over to the Little Italy section of Cleveland to see what it was like. It was very charming and we stopped at Presti's bakery for some breakfast. 

We did eat healthy by having frittatas, but then we just had to have dessert, too!

And then we had to take some with us!

Like I said it was about three blocks long and then went for quite a few blocks off on Murray Hill Road. I'm not sure of the significance, but Little Italy in St. Louis is on Murray Hill too! There is a Catholic church and school close to the bakery and the playground equipment was painted in the colors of the Italian flag.

Our next stop was Kent State University.  

This is the site where were 4 students were shot and killed on May 4, 1970 by the National Guard as they protested Nixon's invasion of Cambodia. We didn't know what to expect for sure, but were pleasantly surprised. It has been placed on the National Historic Register and there was a self-guided tour of the area. 

As we drove into the parking lot we could see these black posts taking up parking spaces. We then realized that they must be markers for the students where they fell. 

In the corner was a marker with the student's name on it.

People had also placed stones on the tops of the posts. We weren't sure why, but assumed it was to show respect in their memory. 

There was also a sculpture that had been there before the shootings. 

There was a bullet hole in the sculpture from the day it happened. I thought it was interesting that there were people coming and going the whole time we were there. I never realized there were so many people touched by this incident.

We were only about 100 miles from Pittsburgh, so we traveled on!

We arrived at our room about 2:30. It was a Residence Inn across the street from PNC Park. It had just opened in May. It is always nice to stay in a new hotel. Our room was really nice. It had a kitchen,

seating area,

and sleeping area.

The most amazing thing was our view! Like I said, the park was right across the street from our hotel. There was a game going on so you could see people walking around the outside getting food and stuff. We could see the parrot mascot walking around. It was nice to have time to just laze around for awhile.

We were looking forward to this evening as Pittsburgh has a restaurant owned by Lidia Bastianich who has had a cooking show on TV. We had eaten at the Lidia's in Kansas City and had enjoyed it very much so were looking forward to eating here. The hostess took us right back to The Don's table which is the table in the corner where he would have a clear view of anyone coming to get him. We started by having a little cocktail. Being from Wisconsin Lindy had to have an Old Fashioned! We ordered the Pasta Trio dinner which comes with salad, three different kinds of pasta, and dessert. 

Naturally, we had to start with a bottle of wine. It was an Italian Red from Lidia's son, Joe who has a vineyard in Italy.

Lindy had an arugula salad with pears and gorgonzola. I had the Caesar salad.

Next came our pasta. They bring each pasta out in a big frying pan and serve it on your plate. There was a big flat noodle pasta with chicken, campanella pasta in Alfredo sauce,

And spinach-stuffed ravioli.
We did get larger portions, in fact we could get all we wanted. Unfortunately, once the food came it looked so good we forgot to take a picture until it was almost gone!

On to dessert, I had a cherry crostada with creme fraiche gelato. It was like a cherry pie in a folded pie crust. It was yummy!

Lindy had (again!) tiramisu.
We got larger portions but again forgot to take the damn picture!

By this time the wine was gone.

But it was time for a digestive. The Italians have this after dinner to help settle their stomach after all the food. We noticed on the menu that they had Averna, which is a liqueur made of herbs and spices.This is something we had been looking for because there was an article in Esquire magazine saying that this was the best thing to have after a big meal. It kind of tasted like Nyquill. Lindy didn't like it, but I thought it was pretty good as it  is meant to be sipped slowly over fascinating conversation or being silly!

While we were eating, a man and his wife were seated at the table next to us. We were laughing and having fun taking the pictures and Linda was taking the pictures of us and stuff. The wife didn't seem to like the food and she was only about 5 feet tall so she was sitting kind of low at the table. The man kept looking over at us and staring all the time. So as I was pretending to take a picture of our wine bottle I took a picture of him and caught him staring at us again!

Alas, all good things must come to and end so it was time to get the bill. If you took away all the booze it wouldn't even have been that much, but the experience and memories are priceless!





Tomorrow we will be off to the ballgame.