Pittsburgh

Last week the family took a long weekend trip to Pittsburgh, centered around seeing the Twins play in a new ballpark. The idea for a summer trip to see the Twins play on the road started a long time ago. Originally, I had mapped out a week-long trip that started in Cincinnati for a Reds game, a stop in Columbus to visit friends, and ending in Pittsburgh for the Pirates-Twins. Another variation was Detroit-Cleveland-Pittsburgh. In the end, Lauren’s work schedule didn’t work out for us to be gone more than 3 days, so I settled on just Pittsburgh due to the cheap, direct flights on Allegiant plus the fact that PNC Park is widely thought to be the best stadium in the majors.

I had only twice visited Pennsylvania, and neither time was it my destination. In 2005 I clipped the very northern tip that juts out and borders Lake Erie en route home from our Toronto spring break. And in 2007 Nick Sandbulte and I took that train from NYC to DC and passed through the eastern edge. So for those sticklers who don’t count either of those as truly having been in Pennsylvania, this would certainly suffice.

The very first thing we did upon landing was rent a car and head away from Pittsburgh in the opposite direction. With Lauren at the helm, we drove a short 20 minutes west to the West Virginia border into that odd northern spoke that is sandwiched between Ohio and Pennsylvania. Having never been to West Virginia, and being that close, I convinced the family to cross off another state. That northern part of WV is literally just three miles wide. We found a serviceable cafe for lunch in Weirton, WV to stake our claim as having done something other than pass through.

At Barb’s Stateline Cafe—a virtual replica of the Carpenter Cafe—Edie began having a big coughing fit until she puked right at the table. Leading up to the trip, Edie was very sick. She missed preschool all week with a fever and stomachache. But on the morning of the trip she woke up and proclaimed she felt amazing! Even when she had been sick, it wasn’t coughing like this. It’s like something changed the minute she got off the plane and she came down with a different unrelated illness. Next we continued westward to Steubenville, Ohio, so John and Edie could check Ohio off their lists. Good friend Bart argued that doesn’t count in his book, but hey, the kids touched foot on Ohio soil.

It was time to head back to Pittsburgh. We dropped the rental car back off at the airport and Ubered into the city, where we checked into the hotel. While Lauren napped and the kids watched TV, I took the short 0.6-mile stroll down to PNC Park to look around and take in the atmosphere. It made me sad to be outside the bustling stadium with the Twins right there on the inside, but attending the Friday night game was not in our plans. We all walked to the famous Point State Park and saw the big fountain on the river. Then we walked over one of the many yellow bridges to the Duquesne Incline, a historic train car that sits on an angle and runs up a steep hill at a 45º angle. Built in 1877, it is still operational, mostly for tourists but I suppose still serves a practical purpose. We ended the night with dinner at a John-friendly restaurant, the Burgatory. Cheap flights, cheap hourly car rental, free park, $2 incline tickets, and relatively cheap dinner… a budget-friendly day!

The next morning we ate at the trendy Sally Ann’s for breakfast and then took in the Heinz History Center—yep, the same Heinz from ketchup fame. The enormous 7-floor museum was very Pittsburgh-centric, but had something for everyone. Someone could easily spend an entire day or longer going through everything, from the entire original set of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood to old city buses and Steelers Super Bowl trophies.

The gals went back to the hotel to take a load off while John and I walked over to PNC extra early for the Pirates-Twins game. It was an 80s t-shirt giveaway which attracted a lot of long lines, so we were far from the first in the ballpark. We had hoped to see Twins’ batting practice but they wrapped up early. John preferred to just sit in our seats and wait 90 minutes til the game started rather than wander around, so that’s mostly what we did. Our seats weren’t great, lower level but deep down the third base line in the corner under an overhang, but at least we were in the shade. Edie had fallen asleep in the hotel room and Lauren didn’t want to wake her, so they didn’t arrive til the 4th inning. The stadium lived up to the billing, the experience was fun, and quite a few $14 beers were consumed, but the Twins went down in defeat 4-0, their second straight shutout loss.

The next morning we ate at a local bakery and then walked over to the Andy Warhol museum. Warhol was apparently a Pittsburgh native. This was another 7-story museum which didn’t much interest the kids, but the grown-ups thought it was interesting. One of the weird art pieces he did was these really long “screen tests” where a subject just looked at the camera for like 45 minutes. They had a room set up where you could do a screen test, so naturally I partook. Literally one second before we were ready to leave and head over to the Sunday Pirates game, a door opened and a man popped out and invited Edie in to do her own art creations. John and I were anxious to get over to the ballpark, so we rushed them out of there.

Our Sunday at the ballpark was much more enjoyable than Saturday. Edie was well-rested, we had MUCH better seats, the kids made it on the big screen, and the Twins finally started hitting. For just $10 more per seat than the day before, we were in the very front row behind the first base netting. It was a gorgeous Sunday afternoon with cooler than normal temps for Pittsburgh in June. The Twins forced extra innings and scored 7 in the 10th to win 11-5. We found some good pub fare for dinner, and called it a night.

Lauren had to fly separately from us, leaving us at the hotel for Houston for a work thing. The kids and I had a pretty luxurious flight time of 11:14, meaning we didn’t have to wake up early and rush out the door. Our Allegiant flight was very bumpy back to Austin, and towards the end, Edie puked all over me and herself. It was a doozy of a mess to clean up in-flight while bopping around in turbulence. But, we made it home. Edie missed preschool Tuesday too, but finally went back to Four Seasons Wednesday after missing all of parts of seven straight days. Phew!

Overall it was a good, relatively inexpensive trip. I highly recommend what I saw of downtown Pittsburgh. I could certainly see myself living there. John wasn’t so sure though… the homeless folk downtown scared him straight, though truthfully it was a far cry from Austin, we just hardly ever visit downtown here with the kids.

With PNC Park, I crossed off my 24th Major League stadium and 20th current stadium, having also visited the defunct Yankee Stadium, Metrodome, RFK, and the Ballpark in Arlington. I hate to try to rank them all because even the crappiest stadiums are still some of my favorite places to be, but PNC with its great views of the bridges and city is very near the top of the list. I am probably biased towards the Twins but I really do think Target Field is very underrated and might still be my #1. It was John’s 11th stadium and Edie’s 4th. I can’t speak for Lauren since I didn’t know her my entire life.

West Virginia was my 45th state visited, leaving only Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Alaska and Hawaii. I will aim to get to those 5 before turning 50, and hopefully sooner! Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio were states 30, 31, and 32 for John, and 20, 21, and 22 for Edie. Not bad for 9 and 5 years old.

Enjoy this un-captioned photo gallery at your leisure.