Day 27: Pittsburgh

Train pulled into Pittsburgh only half an hour late, at 12:15 am. It being an ungodly hour to appear at my friend's door, even supposing I should be successful in reaching it, I had booked an airbnb only a few blocks from the train station in the Strip District, where we used to go on Saturdays to buy vegetables and to dance (at different times of day).

The Strip District is not, as one might imagine, some kind of seedy red light district, but the former site of the Hot Strip Mills, when Pittsburgh was a steelmaking town. That's because it's a long, flat area by the river, and steel mills need a lot of space and a lot of water. After that the area was used for warehouses, and it still is, not having been gentrified like Vancouver's Yaletown, though there are some chic coffeehouses, nightclubs and interesting little shops alongside the produce market, fish market and ethnic food stores - a comfortable mix. On the whole it didn't seem to have changed much in twenty years, except that the name of the club we used to go to on Friday nights had changed.

My cute townhouse in the Strip District

The Strip District, with the Italian espresso bar where we used to go

The Strip District

The Strip District

In the morning I emerged from my comfortable, air-conditioned townhouse to meet my friend Carolyn for breakfast. Carolyn and I met at the YWCA where our daughters used to play together in the tots' play group 21 years ago! Now her daughter is a social worker in Cleveland, and Carolyn is a political activist busy organising demonstrations and writing to congressmen. Her work was mentioned in an article in The Economist a couple of weeks ago!

Carolyn keeps all these signs in the trunk of her car; you never know when they might come in handy!

After breakfast we stopped off in Oakland to see the botanical gardens, where the greenhouses full of tropical plants were not really ideal on a day that was already hot and muggy, and the Cathedral of Learning: the amazing vertical campus of Pittsburgh University, the tallest educational building in the western hemisphere, the second-tallest university building in the world, and perhaps most impressively of all, the second-tallest Gothic style building (of any kind) in the world! Constructed between 1926 and 1931 in Late Gothic Revival style, it has a definite Hogwarts mood inside (though I didn't think of that the last time I was there  - but then I guess Harry Potter hadn't been written yet!). We wandered about and peeked into some of the "Nationality Rooms". Now how much fun would it be to attend lectures in those classrooms?

The Cathedral of Learning

The Cathedral of Learning

The Commons Room

The Austrian Room

The Swiss Room

The Italian Room

The Indian Room

More pictures of the Cathedral of Learning: http://commonhousehold.blogspot.ca/2017/07/the-light-of-learning.html?m=1

The day was getting hotter and hotter and so we retired to Carolyn's house near where we used to live back in 1995-96. On the way we stopped off at Northlands Library, where I used to take Sara to storytime when she was three, and I talked to a volunteer who said she most probably read stories to her - she has been volunteering that long! 

Then we drove by the Lincoln Club, which has now been renamed The Club North Hills, and has a big shopping centre right across the street from it, complete with restaurants and a movie theatre! Sure would've saved me a lot of driving if it had been there back then!

I'm not 100% sure but I think the one on the top floor was our apartment

Carolyn found this in her 1996 photo album!

After sitting out the hot hours and a threatened thunderstorm (which never really materialised) on Carolyn's sofa, we went out for dinner in the aforesaid shopping complex across from the former Lincoln Club and then headed back downtown, where we said goodbye. It was still early for my train, so I went for a walk around the downtown area.

Pittsburgh by night

The Pirates were playing tonight

The downtown area used to be kind of iffy at night, but now it feels perfectly safe. It was a lovely evening and there were plenty of people strolling around. I walked down to the park at the Point where the rivers flow together, and there were large areas cordoned off, and plenty of portapotties, presumably for tomorrow's Stanley Cup victory celebrations. Vague memories surfaced of some downtown festival twenty years ago, though I couldn't recall what it was all about. The downtown area seemed to be pretty much the same, except for a giant new convention centre between the downtown area and the Strip District, right by the train station. Also, one of the bridges was lit up with colourful changing lights.

And now I'm at the train station waiting for the midnight train to Chicago, in a waiting room full of large numbers of Amish people. I guess they don't drive and so when they need to go somewhere they take the train, because they seem to be represented here in disproportionately large numbers!