This weekend found us wandering to the southwest after Peg left work on Friday, spending four hours on the road to get to Pittsburgh for the weekend.
Why Pittsburgh? Well, we'd never been there before. And it's there on the map. Why not?
I have to admit it sits in a beautiful spot, where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers come together to form the Ohio, nestled in a valley surrounded by steep ridgelines. The town has had its ups and downs, rising as a boom town with the advent of the steel industry, then collapsing when steel production went overseas, then reinventing itself as a center of technology and finance. You can see these economic tides reflected in the architecture--downtown is a mixture of spectacular gilded age and art deco architecture, wedged between modern behemoths of steel and glass.
One such behemoth was our home for the weekend, the Fairmont. We arrived in the restaurant exactly five minutes after it closed, and I feared a repeat of the Lake Placid debacle with us scrounging through our luggage for a granola bar or breath mints as our supper. Instead, they accommodated us with a generous pour of good cab, and a table full of tapas to wash down as we enjoyed the view. We were off to a good start.
And it really was a beautiful view from the room, twenty-one floors up.
The next morning we journeyed with hope, finding a century-old coffee shop half a block away.
The place featured a peanut roaster that was a miniature version of the one Peg operated as a child, roasting and selling peanuts back at the farmers' market in Knoxville.
All our good karma soon melted, however, when we went in search of breakfast. The restaurants in Pennsylvania are all at 50% capacity due to Covid, and all offered up to a two-hour wait for a table. I became peckish, which obviously made P unhappy. Finally we found our way back to the Fairmont, where they came through again with an open table, a bloody mary, and a passable brunch.
Reinflated and a little buzzy, we took a walk on a spectacular day to the strip district, Pittsburgh's open air shopping area. As we came upon the bustle, we found Primanti Brothers, a famous eatery recommended to us by a couple Pittsburgh friends.
The local specialty was something called a "Pitts-burger", so we elected to give it a try.
I'm no picky eater, mind you, but this thing was disgusting--a school cafeteria grade patty with a mealy tomato, cold vinegar slaw, some sort of secret sauce and a slice of American cheese, all resting on slightly stale white bread. It was every bit as bad as it sounds.
With most of this culinary shotput now resting somewhere below our diaphrams, we elbowed our way into the mob on the strip, shuffling past sidewalk displays of t-shirts that were all Steeler/Penguin/Pirate black and yellow. Most included some witty use of the word "Yinz," a local colloquialism that roughly translates to "You All." One can hear the echoes of the old "You 'uns" of southern Appalachia, and recognize in this Pittsburgh-ism the voices of folks who came up here a century ago to work in the steel mills.
Peg and I have become farm people in our old age, and surging mobs of humanity are not our thing. We found an Uber, and rode to the Duquesne Incline for a trip up to Washington Heights and, we hoped, a glass of wine with a view and no crowds.
As we disembarked, Peg started tugging on my arm. "Maybe we should just let him drive us up the hill." Our driver had just pulled away when I saw the source of her concern--a very long line of the same sort of folks we'd left behind at the strip, and a trolley that was crawling up and down the hill with room for only a few at a time.
Besides our disdain for crowds, P and I have also decided there's nothing worth standing in line for any length of time. Life's too short. So instead, we waited another 20 minutes for an Uber to take us up the hill. I began to swear again.
Our driver was a jolly, bearded man who talked our ears off as we ascended to the heights. He wanted to take us on a tour of the scenic neighborhood. We just wanted a glass of wine, and convinced him to drop us off at a watering hole with a view.
The wine was forgettable, however, and we were offput by a guy at the next table taking a selfie of himself flipping off Pittsburgh below. Must've been a New Jersey Devils fan in town for the Penguins game.
Time to board for my flight to the panhandle now. I guess I'll write part two in the morning.
Comments