Experience Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh really is a fun city.  There is a lot to do there while visiting for Memorial Day weekend, hopefully including coming to our wedding.  For those of you who live in Pittsburgh or have lived in Pittsburgh, please don’t just breeze past this blog entry - add to it! 

 

• Have kids?  Don’t have kids but are fearful of a large city and wish to be entertained and educated in a fully-vetted family friendly setting?  The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh is a really good children’s  museum, and includes the city’s planetarium.  It is a nice looking building with a great park right in Allegheny center.

• Do you like animals?  Do you hate animals and want to see them snatched from their natural habitats and stared at by a slack-jawed human viewing audience?  However you feel, it is hard to argue that the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium, one of the six major zoos in the country, is anything but a great way to spend the day.  It's located  Highland Park neighborhood. 

• Visit Oakland, home to Carnegie Mellon and to the University of Pittsburgh with the breathtaking Cathedral of Learning. The neighborhood also has the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History, both amazing buildings with respectable collections.  Oakland is also home to the gorgeous Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens (featuring art by the talented but ubiquitous Dale Chihuly).  Definitely a lot going on here.

• Stroll the Strip District, an open air market featuring old world butcher shops, bakeries, and foodie delights.  The Strip District also plays host to some of the city’s best ethnic food and endless street vendors, selling everything from handmade Peruvian children’s toys to Steeler’s jerseys (you won’t have any trouble finding Steeler’s swag anywhere in the city, but The Strip is ground zero for bargain hunters).  The Strip also features scads of antique and curio shops, the Heinz History Center (affiliated with the Smithsonian and Pennsylvania’s largest history museum), and Pamela’s pancakes, worth the trip on their own. Also, home to the sandwich that made Pittsburgh famous, Primanti’s.

• The Southside is where Pittsburgh keeps most of its nightlife.  If you like young people and partying, the Southside is for you.  If, like Chris and me, you are an old codger, it may be worth visiting for anthropological purposes. 

• Stop by at Mount Washington, enjoy beautiful scenic vistas overlooking the serpentine rivers of Pittsburgh that snake under its countless bridges.  Enjoy some of the swankest restaurants the city has to offer while looking out over the city in its full splendor.  Also enjoy “the inclines,” cable cars that have survived 140 years, originally built to take workers down “coal hill” to labor at factories at the mountains base.