Leaving Pittsburgh...

I woke up to rain and grey skies, but it seems to have stopped and I know from watching the weather forecast on TV last night that things will hot up next week. It's been good while I've been here: very hot and plenty of blue skies both in Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

Room 2318 of the Cleveland Marriott – too many pillows, too many beds.

Today I start the long journey home. First a taxi from here to Pittsburgh airport, then a flight to Chicago O'Hare and from there a flight to London, arriving at just gone 7am in the morning on Sunday. I'll be glad to get home.

On Friday night I found an Asian restaurant in the Oakland area of town where I'm staying. I was driven down there in the hotel shuttle bus and the woman driving told me she'd never been to London, but had been to Manchester and, for some reason, Kingsbridge in Devon, a place that holds a few bad memories for me.

Room 606, Quality Inn, Pittsburgh. No bulbs in those lamps, by the way.

The meal was good – a spicy Thai dish and a couple of cold beers – but I hate dining alone as you can't win either way: you're a sad man if you just sit there (as I did) and you're even sadder if you bring out a book and start reading. I was surrounded by couples and groups of friends as this was a Friday night, but once I'd finished my meal, feeling a little sad and lonely, I got the bill and walked home while it was still daylight, up the main street and then left past the Magee Women's Hospital and into the Quality Inn (which has been 'home' for the last couple days).

While I might have cast a few aspersions on the old Quality Inn, it's actually been very good. It takes me a day or two to acclimatise to some hotels – I had similar low views of the El Tropicana in San Antonio, but eventually warmed to it – and now I really like this place too. The shuttle driver was a pleasant, homely woman, born and bred in Pittsburgh; the service, generally, has been friendly and the room, while a little basic, was fine. I prefer a bit of plain-speaking decor: lamps, plugs, a desk and a bed, a TV set and a bathroom. What else do you want? Alright, bulbs in the bedside lamps would have been nice, but you can't have everything.

View from room 606 Quality Inn, Pittsburgh – note 'Cathedral of Learning',
the tall building, which is part of the University of Pittsburgh.

It's odd being in America again. I always feel, as I wander the streets, that I'm not really a human being, but some kind of bit player in the video game Grand Theft Auto. Perhaps I am. GTA's Liberty City could be any American city and that's possibly why, as I wandered around Cleveland and Pittsburgh they both seemed a little familiar to me; not that I spend my time playing GTA – I think I've tried it once or twice – but there you go. Having said that, as I wandered the streets, I occasionally felt as if I should have been trying car doors to see if they were open and, if not, smash them open with my elbow and then drive around the city, just like in GTA. I hasten to add that I never did any such thing – who said video games can be a bad influence?

I put off having to pack up and check out. I hate checking out of hotels, even if it is a little easier than it used to be, especially when my room has invariably been pre-paid. I just pay for my extras and that's only a couple of international phone calls. I had to check out by 11am and I left my bags with the concierge, not that The Quality Inn had a concierge, it's just a phrase that means they'll keep them in a store room until I return. The plan was to wander around, probably not very far, certainly not downtown as it's too far to go, so probably around the streets or down to Oakland's downtown, but I've been there before and there's little to see bar a few low-end stores and a handful of restaurants.

I decided to head to downtown Oakland where I sat in a Starbucks reading the New York Times and enjoying tea and lemon drizzle cake. Then I wandered into a few shops and eventually had lunch in Mad Mex, a Mexican restaurant along one of the back streets. Not sure if I like Mexican food. It's all very samey, but Mad Mex was pretty cool and I enjoyed a couple of vanilla stouts and a chicken burrito before heading back to the hotel to pack things up and head for the airport.

The flight home was a little touch and go in terms of making the connection to London. The Pittsburgh to Chicago flight was delayed by about 20 minutes, and when I reached O'Hare I had to leg it to gate K12 to catch the flight home. It wasn't as good as the BA flight coming out – inferior food – but otherwise it was a pretty cool flight. I had seat 21J, by a bulkhead and a window, meaning a little more leg room than normal. It was a smooth, seven-hour flight to London and I spent a lot of it reading Graham Greene's Stamboul Train. I managed to get about an hour or so of sleep and, when I arrived at Heathrow, I felt alright.

The Heathrow Express took me to Paddington where I took the Bakerloo line to Oxford Circus, changed on to the Victoria Line and then, at Victoria, took a train home. I was picked up at the railway station and we went to see mum for lunch; and then had a much-needed kip, followed by a shower and dinner and now, here I am finishing off a blogpost I started yesterday in Pittsburgh.

Leaving Cleveland and arriving in Pittsburgh...

The media circus in full swing outside the Cleveland County Courthouse.

With an afternoon to kill in Cleveland, I had lunch and then wandered around for a while, checking out caffs and coffee houses for my other blog – yes, I'm a sad, sad man who, very slowly, is turning into a bit of a computer geek. If you're interested in teashops and caffs, then you might like to check it out. The address is pretty self-explanatory, it's http://teashopandcaff.blogspot.com. Rich drove me to the airport at just gone 4pm local time and around 6pm I flew out of Cleveland, bound for Pittsburgh, in a Bombardier twin-propped aircraft. It was tiny, but it was probably one of the most pleasant flights I've had to endure, although the word 'endure' ain't right – it was a pleasure. For a start, it didn't fly high. Then, because there was hardly any cloud, it was relatively smooth. Had their been thick cloud or rain, it could have been one helluva ride, so thank God for favourable weather.

It was a United flight and the air hostess was a little grating. She wasn't your usual 'trolley dolly' glamourpuss and I guessed her name was Martha and that she made a good apple pie. But that wasn't my problem; it was the way she talked to the passengers. Not unfriendly, just a little too homely and mildly condescending. I'm not sure if I could convey it using the written word, but she treated the us like a bunch of unruly kids who needed talking to in a specific kind of way to keep them quiet and well-behaved.

Real flying! It took around 40 minutes to reach Pittsburgh in this plane.

Propeller-powered planes are, basically, 'real flying' and I prefer it (as long as the weather's good). The total flight time was little over 30 minutes, which suited me fine and soon I was in a yellow cab en route to my hotel, a Quality Inn (not ideal and definitely not quality, although, it has to be said, what it lacked in quality it more than made up for in terms of the staff and service down on the front desk). They bent over backwards to be helpful, providing me with maps and suggestions on where to eat out, but with the time at just gone 9pm, I was thinking about an early night, watching the television and catching up on the Ariel Castro sentencing – not that there's much to catch up on.

Cleveland County Courthouse

While in Cleveland, I nipped over to the courthouse to watch 'the media circus' at work. There was Fox News and various other vans with satellite dishes on top of them and there were a few television journalists doing their 'piece to camera'. As for Castro, he's now serving something like 1,000 years in jail and one guy I spoke to earlier in the day said he wouldn't last long in the jail he was being sent to.

Mention must be made of my taxi driver from Pittsburgh airport to the hotel: he was friendly and helpful too, pointing out various landmarks once we arrived in the city.

As I say, the Quality Inn has nothing on the Marriott in terms of quality and I wish I'd been put in a better hotel. I knew that Quality Inn, as a brand, was very much at the budget end of the market, but after the Marriott which, don't get me wrong, is nowhere near as good as the Hyatt brand, I was kind of expecting more – my self-perceived status went from 'international businessman' to 'encyclopaedia salesman'  and now I'm wondering whether the latter still exists. Still, it's a bed for the night and if I don't like it here, how the hell can I talk about wanting to spend the night in The Joyce hote in Portland, Oregon (more of a hostel for drug addicts and down and outs, according to on-line reviews and, let's not forget the roaches and the fights in the corridors of an evening). Sounds kind of fun!

Coming into Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

What's wrong with my room, Room 606? Well, there are no light bulbs in the bedside lamps for a start. I hate that sort of thing, but I think that's it; it's just a bit run-of-the-mill, a bit rough around the edges. There's a big, brown fridge with nothing in it, a microwave oven sitting on top of it, a flatscreen television, everything you might expect, but it's not polished and why should it be? It's cheap, but as I say, the staff are top notch and, ultimately, that's all that matters.

I discovered that none of my lights were working so I called the front desk and they told to check the plugs and to ensure they were switched on and then try the switch by the door; this I did and, sure enough, the lights worked (except for the bedside lamps, which, as I remarked earlier, needed bulbs).

It was getting dark outside when I considered taking a stroll down the road to the nearest restaurants. Being out alone after dark didn't really appeal as I wasn't 100% sure of the area I was in, but nevertheless I went out and when I reached the local downtown (I'm in the Oakland region of town) I found a neon oasis of coffee shops and mid-spend restaurants, none of which appealed. When you're on your own, you want a restaurant where you can merge into the walls and not be spotted as the loner with a book, but none of the restaurants here fitted the bill so I strolled back to the hotel, mindful of who was behind me. I never encountered any trouble and when I got back to the hotel I switched on the TV and jumped from channel-to-channel – all very boring so I switched off the lights and went to bed.