Pittsburgh, the review

Pittsburgh has been an interesting city for a few days. It is rock hard to get around here! Driving is insane. The city is laid out on a number of grids and general advice is "you can't there from here" -- someone actually told David this when he was asking directions. The person said that it was the stock answer for requests for directions.

Okay. Not real tourist friendly.

A good deal of the confusion comes from the fact that Pittsburgh exists on various levels and with two rivers running through it. In the best of times, driving means navigating in an around and up and down. It is also an old city and highway type roads seem to be all over the place -- in neighborhoods and down any small street, and once on a highway, the exits seem to be only more highways. This summer -- and I am not supposing that it is every summer but who knows -- there is lots and lots of road work. That means detours! Finding the right road by number to begin with is no easy task, added to that signs for 4 or 5 or 6 detours which are not in any particular order and which seem to pop up just before any turn off and it is pretty tough on the visitor. At times it did make me appreciate what a good convention city Indianapolis is.

We tend to favor parking our car and taking public transport when we travel; however, there doesn't seem to be much public transport here. Maybe a typical midwest city, although I saw a few buses. No one suggested that I try to take a bus -- unlike New Orleans where every suggested I take buses. There is also a strange cab rule here -- a visitor can hail a cab! You can only get them at hotels or a few other places -- and you have to know where those places are. I have lived in places where there are few cabs making hailing a cab impossible but not one in which cabs on the street will not pick you up because they just don't do that. How did that get to be a good idea?

All that said, Pittsburgh is starting to grow on me. It is pretty gritty -- at least the little of it that I have seen. The museums are good and interesting. I have the feeling that they do what they do well. The food, if and when you find it, is also good and varried. But none of it is easy. Maybe that is why I finally can say that I like it -- it takes work to be here. Nothing like a challenge!

Good eats for us (and we did not go to many places so this is in no way a comparative study) -- Kaya inspire from island food from all over the world. We had a calamari with chayote squash, radicchio, coconut, peanuts, and sesame-banana vinaigrette. David and I enjoyed it; Julia made it her main course. I found a very good little Italian cafe on Smallman Street called __________. Julia and I shared Dad's Fritata that had spicy sausage, onions, peppers and tomatoes in it. It came with a basket of toasted Italian bread that sent me back to Frascati. I also found a great chocolate shop for a few treats to bring home.

We did not do that grown up thing that I was hoping to do -- see Wright's Fallingwater. I have wanted to see this architectural wonder for a long time and it is about an hour outside of the city. It did not; however, seem like something that Julia would enjoy or tolerate very well. Taking her on a tour of an interesting house that just might contain many interesting things while someone talks about the interesting history of the house and its designer would well have turned into a trying and exhausting, and probably frustrating time for us. So, maybe we need to come back when she is older and try a few more restaurants.