An afternoon in Indiana, Pennsylvania

It wasn’t until I came out to Pittsburgh for college that I learned there was an Indiana, Pennsylvania. And as luck would have it, two of my classmates were actually from this small town which is about 90 minutes northeast of Pittsburgh. However, it was during my senior year of college that I discovered that Jimmy Stewart, one of my all-time cinema favorites, was actually from Indiana and there was a museum there devoted to his life and film career. I thought about going but never did. After moving to Pittsburgh full-time post college I always talked about visiting Indiana and yet still never did. It wasn’t until this past weekend that I finally saw this quaint all-American town.

Today, Indiana’s population is just shy of 14,000 although it’s definitely boosted by the fact that it’s home to Indiana University of Pennsylvania. A good thing about “college towns” is that they are often more diverse and offer more unique establishments than the typical small town. Indiana was no exception as in just a couple stretch block of the main drag, Philadelphia Street, we passed by a Chinese restaurant, an Indian restaurant, a shop selling locally grown wines, not one but two hookah bars (college town indeed), and my personal favorite, a European style coffee house.

I first learned about Caffe Amedeus from a blogger friend of mine, Jennifer over at Le Blog. It was something straight out of Europe (no surprise as the owners are European) but to have this little touch of Europe in small-town USA was very cool indeed. I ordered a peppermint chai, D went with a gingerbread latte. My “only” disappointment was that they had a very limited selection of pastries which I was looking so forward to trying some of. We were there about 3 PM on a Friday…so not exactly closing time. It was probably for the better though due to all the amounts of sweets I already had at home. The selection of hot teas and coffees to choose from was incredible.