4 Days in Pittsburgh

This past week I was in Pittsburgh for a conference.  I had spent the better part of a year making fun of Pittsburgh in anticipation of the trip (which I get to repeat next month for yet another conference), but I was so pleasantly surprised!

Because I was traveling east from Alaska, I had to get up at the crack of dawn on Sunday and layover in Minneapolis (woo).  After walking around the airport for 10 minutes, I decided I'm going to start referring to Minnesota as "Alaska South" because they sell the same dumb sh!t in Minnesota that they sell here:

DUUUUUUUUUUUUMB.

I got into Pittsburgh around dinner time.  They put us up at the Wyndham, which wasn't particularly spectacular except for the location.  Oh, and the spectacularly small pillows on my bed:

You would think for $200 a night they could buy some shams or something...

I hit the hotel bar for a glass of wine to hopefully help me go to sleep early and something to eat.  I got some kind of pizza that was more weird than good and I couldn't finish it.  The waiter, who was swarthy and eastern european(?) took personal offense when I told him I didn't want the leftovers and insisted I take it in a "to go" box:

Look inside!

I did not eat the rest of that pizza.

After dinner, I went for a quick walk around the park near the hotel.  I had to walk through some grass and then under an overpass to get to the main park.  Highlight: there was a sitar player under the bridge!  Have you ever seen a street musician play the sitar?? (that building I'm facing is my hotel)

The skyline from the park was really pretty.  Pittsburgh is pretty you guys!

Pittsburgh is full of bridges.  At the conference someone said there are more bridges in Pittsburgh than in any city in the world except Venice.  I would also venture a guess that there are more drunken Pennsylvanians floating around in the river in Pittsburgh than in any other city in the world.  Even on a Sunday.

At the end of the park there was a very pretty fountain that was, despite all of the "keep out" signs and the vigilant park rangers, full of drunken Pennsylvanians (they really love the water).

 It was so pretty! Again, guys, Pittsburgh is REALLY PRETTY.

I walked all along the river before heading back to the hotel and found something very surprising:

That's a sunset! In the summer! And it wasn't midnight.  I don't think I've seen a sunset in three months.

After some exciting days of conferencing, I met up with my Washington colleagues (friends of the Washingtonians I met at the Kansas City conference last summer) to do some exploring.  They decided to check out the college campuses in town.  I was exhausted and not too thrilled to be running all over town, but I'm glad I went along for the ride.

First we had to walk a little bit through the downtown area:

One of my new friends went old school with the paper map while the other used his iPhone. Eventually the other female and I decided to just ask for directions when neither of them could figure out where to pick up the bus.

I rode a bus.  I never ride the bus.  Look at me trying new things!

Eventually we ended up near the University of Pittsburgh, which is unfortunately known as "Pitt" according to all the sweatshirts I saw in the bookstore.

The landmark at Pitt is the CATHEDRAL OF KNOWLEDGE.  According to Wikipedia, it's the 2nd tallest campus building in America.  I didn't look to see what was number one, I just listened to my fellow traveler read wikipedia from his iPhone while I took pictures.  It's a super impressive building, even if it is only number 2.

Across from Pitt is the Soldiers Memorial, which is a museum that I didn't visit the inside of.

I love college campuses.  The landscaping never disappoints.  Especially when it prominently features a panther.

We walked a few blocks down the road (which felt like 100 miles because it was 90 degrees and humid outside), and ended up at Carnegie Mellon University.

Andrew Carnegie gave a lot of money to the university.  He also apparently loved dinosaurs.  Everyone told us to go to the natural history museum to see the dinosaurs, but it was closed when we got there.

Next to the University was the Carnegie Library.  It was beautiful inside!

We walked farther into campus because people had told us to find the "statue of people walking up the pole."  I don't know that I was thinking that would be quite so literal:

Eventually we got back on the bus and headed back downtown (it was about a 10 minute bus ride). While we walked around I noticed that the town was a really cool combination of new and old (and growing):  

I was really expecting Pittsburgh to be run down and kind of sad since they aren't really the "steel city" anymore, but then someone reminded me that they've been pulling shale oil out of the ground like gangbusters in Western Pennsylvania in recent years.  So...yay industry.

Except for the weather, it was a pretty nice town to spend a couple of days in, and I actually have some stuff I still want to do when I go back next month.  Considering Pittsburgh was about 473rd on my list of American cities to visit somewhere just ahead of Cleveland and Detroit, I had a great time.

Stay tuned tomorrow for another episode of "Hiking with Ann."  Thankfully, she did not try to kill us this time (unlike last time).