Friday 10/17/08
Heading Home
We got a great show this morning with a sunrise over the ocean from our window. There were a few low hanging clouds on the horizon that the sun powered through and then lit up our room like a flood light. We have a long day of driving but we can’t pass up this opportunity to take a long morning walk on the boardwalk. We walk about a mile Trump to Trump (Plaza to Taj Mahal) and back. It is about 50-degrees with a breeze from the west and there is a strange assortment of folks out at this hour. We meet a lot of joggers, bikers, guy groups with beer for breakfast, and others who have obviously slept on or under the boardwalk. There are also a lot of feral cats milling about that signs tell you to leave alone. There are a couple hot dog spots and saltwater taffy stores left from the pre-gambling days and the Steel Pier is still an amusement park.
We get on the road late morning beginning our trip west and eventually home. Out dart selection for tonight is Pittsburgh and Mary has scored the Marriott Renaissance downtown (or dahn-tahn as they say in Pittsburgh) for 65 bucks. John lived here 30 years ago for a brief time and just wants to do a drive through. It is about an hour to get to Philadelphia where we get nailed with our first major accident-caused traffic jam of the trip. We waste a good half hour working our way at 5 mph up the Schuykill Expressway (known locally as the “sure-kill”). It is now afternoon by the time we get on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and we get a few miles behind us before we stop for gas and lunch. Mary reluctantly agrees to a Roy Rogers roast beef sandwich and with enough horseradish sauce anything will taste all right.
Once we get past Harrisburg we hit the rolling mountains of central and western PA known here as the Alleghenies. This is bonus color tour for us as these trees are just hitting peak and we have huge 50-mile views. We’re in and out of clouds all day so we get some different perspectives and decide that we like sun because of the colors, or was it clouds because it makes it easier to drive west. Either way it was fine. We trade off driving a couple times and make it to Pittsburgh just in time for rush hour.
Once we get near the heart of the city we hit major traffic back-ups and grab lanes that seem to be moving even if they’re not going in our direction. We wave as we blow past downtown the first time and try to figure out how to get back. Pittsburgh is located at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers where they join to form the Ohio, and downtown is at the point in between all of that. That put us at least one river crossing away from our destination so we worm our way through some side streets and eventually across the Roberto Clemente Bridge right onto 6th street and our hotel. Woo-hoo!
This is a great hotel. The room is massive with 12-foot ceilings and we look at an angle across the Allegheny to PNC park where the Pirates play. There is a fellow playing piano in the lobby when we check in and there is a little martini bar on one side and the restaurant on the other. We debate about dinner (“Olive or Twist” is across the street and they make martinis too.) and decide to just eat at OPUS, the hotel restaurant. Our server, Autumn, is wonderful and Mary’s Salmon Oscar (with chunks of real crab), a potato croquette and grilled asparagus is the best dish she has had on the trip. John has a caramelized prime rib with pickled onions, horseradish, and pierogies with sautéed onions on the side, and that’s great too. This far into a trip we usually get hard to please but they have no trouble impressing.
It is off to bed for us after dinner. Our Pittsburgh visit will pretty much consist of getting lost for a while and the inside of our hotel.
Heading Home
We got a great show this morning with a sunrise over the ocean from our window. There were a few low hanging clouds on the horizon that the sun powered through and then lit up our room like a flood light. We have a long day of driving but we can’t pass up this opportunity to take a long morning walk on the boardwalk. We walk about a mile Trump to Trump (Plaza to Taj Mahal) and back. It is about 50-degrees with a breeze from the west and there is a strange assortment of folks out at this hour. We meet a lot of joggers, bikers, guy groups with beer for breakfast, and others who have obviously slept on or under the boardwalk. There are also a lot of feral cats milling about that signs tell you to leave alone. There are a couple hot dog spots and saltwater taffy stores left from the pre-gambling days and the Steel Pier is still an amusement park.
We get on the road late morning beginning our trip west and eventually home. Out dart selection for tonight is Pittsburgh and Mary has scored the Marriott Renaissance downtown (or dahn-tahn as they say in Pittsburgh) for 65 bucks. John lived here 30 years ago for a brief time and just wants to do a drive through. It is about an hour to get to Philadelphia where we get nailed with our first major accident-caused traffic jam of the trip. We waste a good half hour working our way at 5 mph up the Schuykill Expressway (known locally as the “sure-kill”). It is now afternoon by the time we get on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and we get a few miles behind us before we stop for gas and lunch. Mary reluctantly agrees to a Roy Rogers roast beef sandwich and with enough horseradish sauce anything will taste all right.
Once we get past Harrisburg we hit the rolling mountains of central and western PA known here as the Alleghenies. This is bonus color tour for us as these trees are just hitting peak and we have huge 50-mile views. We’re in and out of clouds all day so we get some different perspectives and decide that we like sun because of the colors, or was it clouds because it makes it easier to drive west. Either way it was fine. We trade off driving a couple times and make it to Pittsburgh just in time for rush hour.
Once we get near the heart of the city we hit major traffic back-ups and grab lanes that seem to be moving even if they’re not going in our direction. We wave as we blow past downtown the first time and try to figure out how to get back. Pittsburgh is located at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers where they join to form the Ohio, and downtown is at the point in between all of that. That put us at least one river crossing away from our destination so we worm our way through some side streets and eventually across the Roberto Clemente Bridge right onto 6th street and our hotel. Woo-hoo!
This is a great hotel. The room is massive with 12-foot ceilings and we look at an angle across the Allegheny to PNC park where the Pirates play. There is a fellow playing piano in the lobby when we check in and there is a little martini bar on one side and the restaurant on the other. We debate about dinner (“Olive or Twist” is across the street and they make martinis too.) and decide to just eat at OPUS, the hotel restaurant. Our server, Autumn, is wonderful and Mary’s Salmon Oscar (with chunks of real crab), a potato croquette and grilled asparagus is the best dish she has had on the trip. John has a caramelized prime rib with pickled onions, horseradish, and pierogies with sautéed onions on the side, and that’s great too. This far into a trip we usually get hard to please but they have no trouble impressing.
It is off to bed for us after dinner. Our Pittsburgh visit will pretty much consist of getting lost for a while and the inside of our hotel.
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