The BF and I will be visiting Pittsburgh and surrounding areas June 5 - 8.  Any suggestions of things we should see or good places to go?  He's a musician and would like to check out the music scene, so if you know of anyplace that has good jazz, he'd definitely be into that.

*Please move this to the Travel and Relocation section*

 

As far as visiting Pittsburgh, I would say definitely hit up the Andy Warhol Museum, walk around Shady Side, Squirrel Hill, Oakland, and the Southside.  These neighborhoods have lots to see and enjoy, and are comfortable to walk around in.  Some of the Carnegie Museums (Art, Natural History) might also be worth a visit.

I like that tram that goes to Mt. Washington, the Southside nabe, and the obligitory Ikea visit of course. There is another thread for pittsburgh where I had some food recommendations. If you like baseball the stadium is great.

Carson Street.  Have fun ;).

I also echo the suggestion of riding the Monongahela Incline up to the top of Mount Washington. The view is great and there's some nice restaurants up there. The incline is next to the T station at Station Square.

 

As for neighborhoods, I really like the community of Mt. Lebanon which is also on the T light-rail line. Think Lakewood but with hills. See: http://www.mtlebanon.org/

 

Downtown is very walkable. Take the T to the Steel Plaza station and stroll down the addresses on 5th, 6th or 7th avenues toward Liberty Avenue. If you like older style structures and classy architecture, you'll like this area. Or perhaps you might want to stay on the subway to the end in downtown (Gateway Center station) and take a walk to Point State Park at the confluence of the Mongahela, Allegheny and Ohio rivers. There's lots of great vistas in downtown Pittsburgh, which is a very compact, walkable downtown.

 

Sometimes it's fun just strolling.

 

warhol museum is a must. primanti bros for lunch. hang out around the strip and the u of p.

 

great city with great views all over. best of all it's very easy to explore. have fun & report back!

I echo the Warhol museum & Carson St. (both amazing)!

 

Hit up the North and South Shores, or whatever they're called too.

The strip district is pretty cool. It's like a linear West Side Market but with more restaurants and individual shops...

http://www.neighborsinthestrip.com/

 

And, I almost forgot this, if you're into it....

http://www.carnegiesciencecenter.org/

Thanks for all the advice.  Turns out there's a big arts fest going on while we're there so it seems like we'll have plenty to see and do!  I will try to remember to take pics...

If you like modern art, I would suggest the Mattress Factory. It has a lot of installation pieces which are super cool! I liked it better than the Andy Warhol museum in terms of crazzzy art. Shadyside is really nice to walk around (especially their Kawaii Store) and the Carnegie museums are really good.

I’m back from the ‘burgh!  I’ll try to post more photos at some point, but the BF took most of the photos and I don’t have them on my computer, I just have a couple here I took with my phone.  Anyway, here is my summary of the experience.

 

Friday:  We arrived at our hotel around 3:00 pm.  We stayed at a Marriott west of the city in an area near the airport called Robinson Town Center.  It was a weird place to stay, all big box stores and strip malls and our hotel.  But most of the places downtown we looked at were considerably more expensive.  We got a good deal and the room was very nice with a very good breakfast buffet every morning and it was only about 8 miles from downtown. 

 

After we dropped off our things, we headed to town.  We decided to check out Carson St./South Side, which was very cool.  This was one area Pittsburgh has us beat, because the closest Cleveland neighborhood I can liken it to would be Coventry, but this is a much larger strip that stretches considerably farther.  It had a very eclectic mix of shops and eateries (and a tattoo parlor practically every block), and the people-watching includes a diverse mix of freaks, hippies and regular folks.  The surrounding neighborhood has some very cool old brick homes but most of them are not in great shape and the neighborhood seems to be a bit economically depressed, but not scary or anything.

 

At this point, the BF was in need of a frosty alcoholic beverage, so we stopped into a place called Fatheads, and then realized that this is the same Fatheads that just opened in North Olmsted, which we have not been to yet.  BF had the Headhunter IPA and liked it a lot.  I had their bottled ale which I forget the name of, but it was good.  Weird that we had to come to Pittsburgh to try Cleveland beer.  (BTW, Great Lakes beer is common in Pittsburgh too). 

 

We wandered down to the end of Carson St. where they have built a Crocker Park-esque development called South Side Works.  The Boilermaker jazz band was playing out in the square so we stopped to listen for a while and got some advice on things to do in town from the bandleader who is an acquaintance of BFs.  We wandered back down Carson and had another drink in a little corner bar and by the time we left, the character of the street had definitely changed into sort of a rowdy, slightly seedy frat party atmosphere, like the clientele of the flats when it was in its decline.  Not really our scene, so we headed over to Shadyside trying to find a couple music clubs that were listed in their equivalent of Scene, but didn't find them.  There didn’t seem to be a whole lot over there except some upscale shops that were closed.  It had kind of a Rocky River vibe, although denser, narrow streets, nice homes.  At this point we headed back to the hotel and hopped in the Jacuzzi, had a couple beers we had brought from home and called it a night.

 

Saturday:  We decided to head down to the Strip District which we were told was very cool.  First we had to sit in traffic for an hour and a half because there was a Kenny Chesney concert that people apparently were showing up for hours and hours in advance and we were all going into town through the 2-lane Fort Pitt tunnel.  Nightmare.  Finally got to the strip.  Saturday 9 am – 3 pm is the time to go there, all kinds of vendors are cooking on the street, it is awesome.  We got a couple coffees at la Prima, BF splurged on a couple cigars as a treat for later (cigars seem pretty popular in Pittsburgh) and was drooling over the huge Italian grocer and enormous fish market.  We got a fish sandwich and some kind of tasty mung bean pancake thing.  (Side note, I think Pittsburgh is even more obsessed with the Penguins than we were with the Cavs; signs, shirts and penguin hats were everywhere.  A sign at the fish market read, “You can’t buy octopus if you are from Detroit.  ID Required.”)

 

We headed over to the Three Rivers Arts Fest which is a very nice downtown event that goes on for 10 days.  It used to be 3 weeks apparently, but they condensed it.  Everything is free and it is quite a big festival.  We saw a few short plays, tons of art booths and listened to a couple bands.  Had a drink and a bite at a little Cabaret bar in their theater district. Their downtown has a similar feel to Cleveland. A small geographical area, signs of progress, some nice restaurants and shops, but still a lot of empty places and stuff closed on the weekends.  I didn’t notice much residential downtown.  Point State Park at the confluence of the rivers is a nice space with a lovely setting and well utilized for the event, though greatly in need of renovation.  Based on signage and fenced off areas, that is already underway.  There is also some enormous hole in an intersection right near the park, I don’t know if this is going to be a new skyscraper?  I didn’t see any signage indicating what is being built there.

 

Hangin' in Point State Park

 

After a long hot day of walking around in the sun, and unable to find a really good beer all day, we decided to get a six pack and go back to the hotel to relax.  We needed a few items from the store anyway, and since our hotel is in the middle of big box mecca we went to Walmart for the first (and probably last) time ever.  Anyway, they had no alcohol whatsoever.  I ventured that maybe they don’t sell booze because it’s Walmart and they have morality issues with it?  So we drove around some more and found a Giant Eagle.  Again, no beer.  What the h*ll?  Then some kind soul informed us that alcohol can only be sold by certain establishments and bars in PA.  Now we understood why so many bars sold six packs.  He started to give us directions to the closest liquor store which was at least 15 miles away.  We let it go and went back to the hotel defeated, BF nursed his last Dogfishhead and vowed to find good Pittsburgh beer tomorrow.

 

Sunday:  We were told by several people that the Mattress Factory was pretty cool, so we headed out to check that out.  We got there a little before it opened, so we wandered around the neighborhood.  It is a pretty depressed area immediately over the river from downtown on the north side.  The housing stock is very cool old brownstones, some of which have been renovated and are beautiful, but the neighborhood as a whole has a long way to go.  The Mattress Factory is housed in 4 floors of what I assume is an old mattress factory, it also has an auxiliary building a few doors down that was open that day.  The mirror rooms were kind of cool:

 

 

Most of the rest was the usual modern art type stuff and then some of the exhibits were the kind that make you feel like you’ve been ripped off.  One room was just a musty basement with the walls covered in black plastic garbage bags and a looped CD making beeping sounds.  Another room was total blackness and you are supposed to sit in a chair and wait to see whatever it is you are supposed to see.  I saw my ten dollars floating into a black hole of stupidity.  I suppose the exhibits change and it probably depends on when you go, but we were underwhelmed. 

 

We headed back to the arts fest to see a musician BF had been excited to see, but we either had the time wrong or picked up a misprinted schedule, because it turned out he was on at 6:00, not 4:00.  We had reservations at Lidia Bastianich’s restaurant for that evening, so we couldn’t stick around.  So we went to the restaurant, which is back in the strip.  BF is a big fan of her cooking show and had been wanting to go to her restaurant for a long time.  We budgeted for this to be our big splurge and expected to spend some dough.  We got a medium-priced bottle of wine, caesar salad, he got the pasta special (three samples of the pastas of the day which can be refilled based on whichever ones you want more of), I ordered the beef cheeks ravioli special.  The wine was nice, the ceasar salad was quite plain, my ravioli was badly overcooked (chewy, hard edges), and his pasta also had issues.  Plus it took over a half hour and a couple requests before he got the refill of the two pastas that he requested.  The only thing that was really good was the dessert (chocolate semifreddo with peanut butter ice cream) and the coffee, I had an excellent latte.  Considering the prices they were charging, this was again a disappointing experience.

 

Undaunted, we decided to resume our hunt for beer.  A bartender downtown had recommended Penn Brewery, so we headed out to the north side again.  We pulled into the parking lot…Closed.  Arrgh! 

 

….But just when it seems that all is lost, we strike up a conversation with these two hippie dudes who are looking at a map.  Turns out they are on a cross-country road trip and fellow travelers on a quest for good beer.  They relate stories of a mythical place, a former church converted into a brewery.  Finding it on their GPS system, we head out once again in search of the holy grail.  After a number of wrong turns, we drive into a fairly non-descript neighborhood, and come upon the promised land…

 

 

We walk through the doors…[Queue sound of angels singing]

 

 

Yes, those are the tanks on the altar.  Feel free to genuflect…

 

 

This place is huge, though it was pretty quiet at the time we were there.  The hippie dudes got some food and porters I think (dark beers seem popular in the ‘burgh), I got the Cherry Quadzilla, which was I liked, BF got some kind of pepper flavored beer which was pretty good too.  And it made me think, we have tons of soon to be abandoned churches in the Cleve, this would be fantastic here.  Check it out at www.churchbrew.com.

 

Monday:  Headed over to do the Duquense incline (touristy, yeah, but still fun and a great view of the city.)  There’s not much up there at the top, an overlook, a couple restaurants, that’s about it.  Headed back out of town, stopped in a local park for a picnic lunch, hit IKEA for a little bit and headed home.

 

Overall, we had a good experience and liked Pittsburgh a lot, but also have a better appreciation for Cleveland too.  There are clearly a lot of similarities between the two cities with their benefits and struggles.  My advice if you go, check out Carson St. during the day (or if you’re a party animal, you might like it at night), the Strip on Saturday morning and the Church Brew House anytime.  If I went back, first of all I’d get a better map and do more research rather than the “winging it” approach we took. I might like to take a boat trip on the river or one of the Duck tours, Carnegie museum, and I would try to stay in the city rather than outside.  Oh, and I’d stock up on beer…