Picture it: Pittsburgh; the year was 2008. I graduated with my Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Hospitality and Tourism Management from Robert Morris University. I had a wonderful undergraduate experience, where I was hyper-conscious of making sure I made myself employable from this expensive degree, because I was the first to attend college in my family and I wanted to help my family and make them proud.

My mom, Rita, turned 60 last year, and my sister, Nicoletta, and I wanted to take her on a special birthday trip to commemorate this milestone in her life! We offered her anywhere (literally in the world to pick from), but she wanted to go to a place she hasn’t been in close to 30 years...Bedford, Pennsylvania! It is a place that was always special to her heart growing up as a child. Her father, John (my grandfather), was from a little town in Bedford County, called Riddlesburg.

Cookbook author and food researcher/educator Diana Kennedy, now 97 years old, is the subject of a brilliant new biographical movie, Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy.

Whales, minerals and dinosaurs. Planets, forests, mammals and butterflies.

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a hub for all things human science: biology, ecology, zoology, geology, astronomy and anthropology. Spanning many city blocks on the Upper West Side of New York City, with four floors, 42 permanent exhibits, a planetarium and an IMAX theater, approximately five millions visitors explore this behemoth of a museum each year.

If your family’s anything like our family, you love to talk and to learn about history, whether that’s in the local area or on the other side of the world. You’ll know you’ve caught the bug if you can’t get enough of documentaries and the history channel.
 
Nothing quite brings history to life like going to visit some of the places where the iconic moments that shaped our times took place. But with so much history all around us, how can we decide where to visit first?