Pittsburgh

Well I was sent to Pittsburgh for work and it was hectic, was at work on the Monday in London, on a plane to Pittsburgh USA on the Tuesday and then onsite on the Wednesday. Then work for 5 days including the weekend and on a plane back on the Monday to be back at another week of work in London. Exhausting is an understatement.

The hotel we stayed at was very nice, our rooms were very good and it had a couple of restaurants in it. One was a well regarded seaford restaurant and I ate here the first night we arrived. I did not think much of their seaford selection as everything was battered and deep fried, not my idea of a high class meal.

The week went reasonably quickly as we were very busy, over the evenings my colleague and myself tried a number of the fine dinning area's around Pittsburgh. On the second evening we went to a little restaurant called Nine on Nine a very fancy place. I was slightly dissappointed when my starter had arrived thinking I'd been cheated as it cost something like $15 and was a few extremely thin slices of beef with topping. Only I discovered that it was the highly talked about Kobe beef and have white truffle sauce on it. It was actually delicious, the flavour was fantastic and I forgot all about the cost (after all I wasn't paying anyway).

I found the city to be very pleasant and I really liked the fact that unlike london the streets were signed, not only that but the street names where written in the curbs. We decided to try a different restaurant each day, I think we were not really about to top "Nine on Nine" but it did give us some nice variety.

There were also a number of interesting American pubs that we tried with one in particular being a favourite as it had a real old american feel to it with what looked like a cast iron roof. It was called Olive or Twist (The website makes it look much classier than I remember it). This was actually a Martini bar and I did actually have a Martini here, it was quite good too. This place had a great atmosphere and also was very close to the ballpark so was an after ballgame haunt.
The other place we really liked was called ?? and it was a Mojita bar and was very close to Nine on Nine. It was very nice too, I tried to look up the name but can't find it. Also of note is the Kwik-e-mart that was across the road from our hotel, I had meant to go in it but never got around to it. I went into a different 7-11 and assume they are all pretty much the same.

On my travels around the streets I found a little Violin shop and thought I'd take a picture of that for Mum and Joe who have been going to classes on making their very own violin's. Maybe one day they will be able to have a shop of their own ;)

Though I know very little about architecture, I know what I like. I liked a lot of the buildings in Pittsburgh and they have some nice bridges called the three sisters. These have been named after famous Pittsburgh people (one is named after Andy Wahol). These bridges were famous as they were the first self anchored bridges in the USA (at least the plaque said so, and wikipedia backs it up, so it must be true ;)). Well whatever their historic significance I thought they looked great and so took a photo.


I must say that not all the architecture was to my taste, one such building I took a photo of was pretty much all glass, from what I was told it was the headquarters of a glass company so I guess it makes sense. I took a photo of that too for you, it's easier to just see what I mean then explain it.