Violet Sky

Last spring, my husband approached me and asked, “Would you rather go to Cleveland or Pittsburgh?” One of his favorite bands, Opeth, was going on tour, but wasn’t going to be coming to the west coast at all for the tour. Since we visited Cincinnati last fall and I hadn’t yet been to Pennsylvania, I chose Pittsburgh.

Now, let me just pause to say that, despite our many more times over expensive international trips as comparison, this felt like the most extravagant trip we’ve ever taken. Who flies halfway across the country just to see a band play live that you’ve already seen before? (Oddly enough, I was talking to a friend literally last night who was doing exactly that for a different artist, so maybe it’s more common than I thought) It was actually a kind of perfect way to get a taste of a city, though – we flew in on a Friday, saw the show on Saturday, had Sunday to toodle around the city, and then flew back on Monday morning.

Considering that this trip was driven by my husband, it was fitting when our airplane up to Seattle ended up being a Star Wars plane. I’ve seen lots of different Alaska plane variants, but this was a first for me!

Much like PDX for the last several years, PIT was also under construction when we arrived off the plane. Unlike PDX, we were greeted by this friendly Tyrannosaurus as we made our way toward the baggage claim. Our flight got into Pittsburgh at 9:30 at night, so we hailed an Uber, dropped our luggage off at the hotel, and went in search of some food. I used Hyatt points to book Hyatt Pittsburgh North Shore, which is conveniently located if you don’t plan on having a car (like us) but inconveniently located in dead zone for services – the surrounding businesses are pretty much exclusively sports bars or brewpubs, since they’re all sandwiched in between the Pirates stadium and the Steelers stadium. Luckily, Southern Tier was willing to sell us some decent beers and some less than decent food at 10:30 at night.

The next morning, I skipped breakfast and my husband had some cheap ramen he’d brought from home, so we went in search of a large lunch once we’d gotten some caffeine into us. We’ve had pretty good luck with Eater’s suggestions by city when traveling around the US, so we looked up Eater Pittsburgh and decided to head over to Deutschtown after seeing a German restaurant recommended there. Deutschtown was very cute but also very dead on a Saturday morning.

Max’s Allegheny Tavern has existed since 1977, but the building it’s located in has existed since the 1860s. For a good portion of its lifetime, it was the Hotel Rahn, and the interior layout does not seem to have been updated much over the last century+ – very homey, not at all pretentious. Our waitress was friendly and funny, and very proud of Pittsburgh in general. We split the two plates you see here, plus a large pretzel that, when we ordered it, the waitress commented, “Oh good choice, those are as big as a steering wheel.” Not quite that large, but approaching it, for sure. Everything was delicious.

The Opeth show wasn’t until the evening, so we had some time to wander around downtown Pittsburgh. The riverfront walk just around the corner from the hotel gave us a beautiful view of many of the bridges. I love the bridges in Portland; these were more uniform (all yellow!) but a similar enough vibe that I was a fan. We walked by the baseball stadium, which had a bunch of imagery that I’m sure was meaningful to someone.

As we wandered through downtown, we stumbled across an unexpected gem, the Fort Pitt Block House. The house was constructed in 1764 by the British, predating the United States. The rest of the fort is long gone, but this small house remains.

The rest of downtown had us gradually circling the PPG Place building, which was both of our favorite. It looked like a castle and was made entirely of glass, so it was an easy choice. The steelworkers union building was my second favorite and very on brand. It became apparent that Heinz was founded in Pittsburgh after only a little bit of time in the city, and while we didn’t do the Heinz tour, we still managed to wander by the offices and the tour site while discovering more of the downtown area. For some reason, one of the bridges was closed to traffic, so we got to enjoy walking down the middle of the street on our way back to attend the Opeth show.

The show was at Stage AE, less than a five minute walk from our hotel. This turned out to be fortunate because their allowed bag size was something like 3 x 6 x 4 inches. I had brought my smallest purse, which I typically bring to shows, but we had to hustle back to the hotel, drop off my purse, and hustle back. It could’ve been terrible if we’d been further away or taken an Uber to get there, but I suppose it’s also on me for assuming the sizing allowance. The band was very talented and my husband had a great time, plus we managed to find standing space up on the balcony, which was a big improvement from the floor. Something about being a smaller woman in a sea of mostly above average height men is always a little challenging at shows.

The next day, we didn’t have any grand plans. My husband had pitched us driving to West Virginia, because neither of us had been and neither of us could really imagine ourselves making a special trip across the country to visit that state in particular. Originally, I had turned him down, because driving for an hour and a half round trip to say I’ve been in the state of West Virginia wasn’t an enormous sell, but once I saw the whole of Sunday available, I decided we might as well. We visited Weirton, WV, a collapsed factory town that used to have a thriving steel mill. It no longer does, and frankly it wasn’t a very large town to begin with, so these are the only (non blurry photos of fall foliage) photos I got of our time. A sandwich from Primanti Bro’s (which is actually a Pittsburgh chain that everyone said we had to try – it was alright) and the two dollar stores next to each other in the parking lot with the Primanti Bro’s.

Next, we made a quick stop by the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. We got there in time for the penguin feeding (cute!), admired these adorable burrowing owls, and got to watch some huge condors bicker over scraps of hide.

A friend of mine had asked if we’d gone to the Cathedral of Learning, so after we finished with West Virginia, we decided to go see what the fuss was about. Wow!! We both absolutely loved it. A gorgeous building, inside and out. Carnegie Mellon University was next door to the University of Pittsburgh and also had a lovely campus, but nothing that could compete with the cathedral. The last photo in the slideshow above is from CMU.

The next day, we had an early wake up for the flight back to the West Coast. It’s always nice seeing the I-205 bridge curving into Vancouver from Portland on our way in. 😁 Overall, I really liked Pittsburgh and while it was a bit of a packed weekend, it was a great way to dip in and experience a city.