Stopover in Pittsburgh

To break up our drive home from New York, Frank and I stayed in Pittsburgh on Thursday night. Neither of us had been there before and we thought it was a great city and wished we had some time to wander around and discover the city more.

After checking into our hotel we headed out to dinner at Primanti Brothers. Opened in 1933 to sell sandwiches to truckers and dock workers in the Strip District, Primanti's is famous for serving fries and coleslaw on their sandwiches instead of on the side so that workers could eat with one hand and keep working.

Although Primanti's has several location around the city we went to the original restaurant which had cool old signage and a neat mural of Pittsburgh luminaries. Frank had a cheese steak sandwich, I had the kolbassi and cheese sandwich and we split an order of Smallman Street fries topped with chili, cheese, bacon and sour cream. I loved my sandwich and thought the combination of kolbassi, melted cheese, fries and cole slaw on soft, thick slabs of Italian bread was amazing.

In the morning we headed to Shadyside to try breakfast at Pamela's Diner. My corned beef hash was one of the best I've ever had with amazing amounts of corned beef and large chucks of perfect potatoes. Frank tried Pamela's famous crepe style pancakes which were light and fluffy and had wonderful, crispy edges.

On our way out of town we stopped at the West End Overlook which provided a great panorama of downtown and the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers. It was quite overcast but the view was still lovely and I can only imagine what it would look like on a sunny day.

If we had more time I would have loved to explore the city more and in particular visit some of the museums like the Andy Warhol Museum and the Carnegie Museums of Art & Natural History. Hopefully I'll have a chance to go back someday...