Well Pittsburgh, we've gotten ourselves into a little laundry situation. No, it's not you, it's me. I meant to wash laundry in Hershey, but with all that amusement parking, I was just too tired. "I'll just do it when we are in Pittsburgh." I thought naively. The "Timeless European Elegance" offered by the your AC Hotel did not include a place to launder your "Old American Drawers". I suppose I am looking a little worn from the road, because I was unable to persuade the powers that be to let me use one of the industrial washers that they use for the linens. I had my sites set on one of those puppies that could wash a weeks worth of laundry in one load! The concierge recommended a place where, for the right price, you can just drop your clothes and they wash and fold them for you! What is this life altering, witchcraft? So, we set out early to drop the laundry so we'd be back to the hotel in time to meet our new friend, George. I'd found George in my research about Pittsburgh and he is the Go-to expert on the area. You can hire him to take you around the city and let you in on all the juicy tidbits. George is native to Pittsburgh and regaled us with sites and stories for the better part of the morning. We started our day with a trip up the Duquesne Incline. It's this little cart thingy (I thought it was called a funicular, but George corrected me) that hoists you straight up a mountain and has been doing so since 1877!
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| View from the top |
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| View from our little 134 year old death wish |
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| George describing the innards of the Incline |
After hearing all about the different buildings and bridges of the Pittsburgh skyline, we descended the mountain and piled into George's van. George was very disappointed in us when he found our knowledge of Pittsburgh sports to be lacking, Take home message: They take the sports very seriously in the 'Burgh. George told us all about this crazy comeback story from the 70's. And, the we posed for it because apparently it is a thing...
One my favorite stops was when George stopped the van and told us to go around this brick wall. He said, that he'd arranged for a friend of his to meet us. "Just ask for Fred". When we rounded the corner we heard a familiar voice echoing within this acoustic arch. It was the voice of Mr. Rogers telling the story of The Three Bears. And ahead of us, a huge sculpture of him. Mr. Rogers was filmed in Pittsburgh and the trolley was based on the Incline that we rode earlier in the day!
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| Won't you be my neighbor? |
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| My Childhood, sculpted. |
George dropped us in the Strip District which is NOT full of strippers as the name would lead you to believe. It is a lovely little shopping district that highlights all types of wares, foods both regional and international, and of course, anything and everything with The Steelers emblazoned on it. We sampled some pierogies from a polish deli for first lunch. Second lunch was a visit to the famous Primanti Brothers restaurant for one of their famous sandwiches. Given that we know George, we are pretty much experts on Pittsburgh so, we weren't surprised when one of the key ingredients of the sandwich was ....yep. Fries.
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| First Lunch, not to be confused with Second Lunch |
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| How do I even eat this? |
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| Primanti Brothers know how to make a sandwich! |
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| Grandpa Joe's was a great source for more sugar! Just what we need when we are 5 people deep in a hotel room... |
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| Seriously someones car, and it's not even football season |
I had built up our next stop after a strong recommendation from my friend, Casey, who lived in Pittsburgh for a time. Wait for it......The Cathedral of LEARNING! Learning is my favorite! When I revealed our afternoon stop, the reviews were mixed. Actually, not as much mixed as unanimously staunchly opposed. "Mom, no more learning!" "Mom, we've learned enough for one day!", "A tower of learning seems like a lot of learning!". The Cathedral of Learning is a magnificent structure on the campus of The University of Pittsburgh. It is the second tallest educational building IN THE WORLD and is 535 feet tall! The bottom two floors showcase the Nationality Rooms which as I understood it, are classrooms set up as they would be from countries all over the world! Doesn't that sound cool? I had talked it up to the point that the kids were semi-quasi-interested! We got there and the little baby child working the front dest told me it's closed to the public.
Me: What the haystack? I looked at your website and it said you were open.
Baby Child: We are only open to students and faculty.
Me: Well, what if I got a student to walk me through, would that work? (visions of me running outside and snatching up the first student that passed and coercing them into taking my family into the Cathedral).
Baby Child: No, everyone has to have a Pitt ID.
Me: Well, that is dumb. Because your little Cathedral of Learning is but a house of lies if you don't let me LEARN in it! And, we are fully vaccinated and will double mask!
Baby Child: (While barely looking up from the phone on which he is gaming) Sorry, not my rules.
Me: Huffs out. Day two vacation Sarah might've fought the good fight, asked to speak to a manager, but I am tired. I threw my hands up and broke the news to the children.....they were okay with it. We walked around the Pitt campus that is rather lovely doesn't really care about outsider learning and then headed over to Carnegie-Mellon just for good measure. College tours done for Pittsburgh.
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We stopped by The Laundry Factory to pick up my clean laundry that was clean and folded! And I DIDN'T HAVE TO DO IT!!! Now, I have experienced the laundry fairy!
Many of the restaurants in Pittsburg are closed on Monday and Tuesday, so our options were limited on this particular Tuesday night. We struck out with our first two choices but scored big with our third choice, Sienna Mercado is a restaurant specializing in Meatballs and all of the jokes that ensue when an eleven-year-old boy gets to read a menu where the word "balls" appears about 80 times. Food was delicious, waiter's t-shirts and Thomas' humor were a bit crass.
Tomorrow we will check off our 46th state! Almost heaven, West Virginia!!
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