An Afternoon in Pittsburgh.

We’ve spent last week visiting our hometown in Northeast Ohio and having moved away from home in our late teens hadn’t really spent any time in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as adults. In recent years, hearing more and more what a great city Pittsburgh is with a lot to offer, we thought might as well take the hour drive and spend an afternoon exploring a ‘new’ city. Here’s a glimpse at our afternoon in Pitt.

We drove into the city and started our day late morning by visiting Frick Park. It was a great way to ease into the city and also get Rowan out of the car to play and stretch his legs. Home to a fun for all ages playground now known as Blue Slide Park, in honor of Mac Miller and his album of the same name, complete with an epic blue slide built into the hillside that Rowan didn’t want to leave. The park is pretty expansive as well with walking & fitness trails, hiking trails, picnic areas and more, and the neighborhood around the park is a lovely place to stroll amongst historic, tudors and victorians.

From the park we drove around the corner to the Squirrel Hill neighborhood to dive into a big spread of Chinese food at Chengdu Gourmet. Reasonably priced, and pretty tasty, if you have a hankering, would recommend - we got there around the time they opened and the carryout orders did not stop the entire time we were there.

Our next stop, the main event if you will, was the Andy Warhol Museum. Andrew had never been and while I had gone at some point in high school figured it was sort of a must see while in Pittsburgh. Generally speaking, the museum itself is great, but our visit was a little bit of a bust with two of the main galleries being closed. We sped through the entire museum in under and hour and felt a little ‘cheated’ having missed out on some well known works.

From there we made our way to the Mexican War Streets neighborhood on the Northside to visit the fun and ‘free’ Randyland. A by-donation art installation? (I guess you’d call it) that is the home of artist Randy Gilson that he has turned into an open air art museum boasting a rainbow of color and good energy. Gave me Salvation Mountain of the city vibes - if you’ve ever been for reference.

Before nap time, and getting in the car to head home, we walked a few blocks further throughout the charming Mexican War Streets neighborhood to grab a coffee and pick out all the townhouses we’d want to renovate and make our dream home. We popped into Commonplace Coffee for an oat milk latte, watched the bees pollinate flowers in the community garden then took one last stroll across the colored cobblestones at Randyland before starting our short journey home. We didn’t make it on this visit, cause it was already a big day for buddy, but the Mattress Factory art museum is also a block from Commonplace Coffee so would add that to the list for our next visit!