{"id":144,"date":"2002-10-25T19:09:00","date_gmt":"2002-10-26T01:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/?p=144"},"modified":"2002-10-25T19:09:00","modified_gmt":"2002-10-26T01:09:00","slug":"cleveland-is-just-a-couple-of-hours-away-from-pitt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/2002\/10\/25\/cleveland-is-just-a-couple-of-hours-away-from-pitt","title":{"rendered":"Cleveland is just a couple of hours away from Pitt&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cleveland is just a couple of hours away from Pittsburgh.  Probably around 150 miles between the two cities.  Aileen was there for a convention for med-school students and their group was promoting the residency program at UPMC McKessport.  Since she was going to be away for the weekend, Zoe and I decided to tag along.  Here&#8217;s some of the fun stuff we did:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; We got to stay at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.renaissancehotels.com\/dpp\/PropertyPage.asp?MarshaCode=CLEBR&#038;EPNAVCEC=InProcess\">Renaissance Hotel<\/a> in the historic <a href=\"http:\/\/www.warehousedistrict.org\/\">Warehouse District<\/a> in downtown Cleveland, which is probably one of the nicest hotels I&#8217;ve ever stayed at.  For $250 a night, it better be good.  It&#8217;s an old, rustic hotel which kinda reminds me of the French Quarter in New Orleans.  It was very antique-looking, from the chandeliers, to the furniture, to the paintings displayed on every floor &#8211; the hotel had a very old-fashioned feel to it.  And the best thing about it was staying there for <b>free<\/b>, as Aileen&#8217;s hospital picked up the tab for that.  <\/p>\n<p>&#8211; One of the more popular attractions in the city is of course, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rockhall.com\">Rock and Roll Hall of Fame<\/a>.  Being a music freak, I just couldn&#8217;t pass up the opportunity to check it out and I dragged Aileen and Zoe along for the ride.  It was pretty interesting to see all the memorabilia they&#8217;ve collected over the years.  They&#8217;ve got stuff like Steven Tyler&#8217;s clothes from the 70s, the outfit that Britney Spears wore at the 2001 MTV awards (you know, the skin-colored one), TLC&#8217;s dance gear with the lights positioned at strategic places, and lots of old records, magazines, fan club buttons, etc.  They even had James Taylor&#8217;s 5th grade report card.  The one thing I have to complain about though are the steep prices.  Although the hall of fame is very interesting (and at least worth checking out at least once) &#8211; $17 is just a little too much for what you get.   <\/p>\n<p>&#8211; On Saturday Night, we just had to go out for a drink, but our dilemma was where we could go get some beer and cocktails and still bring along Zoe.  The solution?  We went to a bar\/restaurant called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alicecooperstown.com\/home.html\">Cooperstown<\/a> which is owned by rock legend Alice Cooper.  Think the Hard Rock Cafe turned sports bar, and you&#8217;ve got the atmosphere there at that place.  The food wasn&#8217;t that great (Aileen particularly didn&#8217;t like their buffalo wings),  but I had some of the local beer and Aileen had a strawberry daiquiri all while watching the second game of the World Series.  A really nice night, and I got to go drinking with my two favorite girls in the world.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; On Sunday, we ate brunch at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.watermark-flats.com\/\">Watermark<\/a> restaurant at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cleve-visitors-guide.com\/flats.htm\">Flats<\/a> (which is the equivalent of the Strip District in Pittsburgh and South Street in Philly in terms of it being the place for great bars, clubs &#038; restaurants &#8211; in other words, my kind of place <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.eduandaileen.com\/images\/emoticons\/chat_face_cool.gif\">).  We were told that the Watermark is one of the best seafood places in town and they had Sunday brunch.  We were expecting something like the spectacular buffet at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.captaingeorges.com\/\">Capt George<\/a> in Virginia.  To our disappointment, the only thing close to seafood was an omelette that had fake crab meat.  Things weren&#8217;t all bad though as the roast beef and paella more than made up for it.  I swear that they served some of the most juicy, succulent roast beef I have ever had. I heartily recommend anybody who goes to Cleveland to visit this restaurant just to try the roast beef out (just don&#8217;t expect seafood if you&#8217;re eating brunch). <\/p>\n<p>All in all, out trip was a lot of fun.  Cleveland is a very nice city to visit.  Clean and spacious, it reminds me of Chicago, but in a smaller sort of way.  It&#8217;s definitely worth another visit.  <\/p>\n<p>Check out some of our pictures <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eduandaileen.com\/album.asp?album=76\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cleveland is just a couple of hours away from Pittsburgh. Probably around 150 miles between the two cities. Aileen was there for a convention for med-school students and their group was promoting the residency program at UPMC McKessport. Since she was going to be away for the weekend, Zoe and I decided to tag along. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}