Day 21: A Dog's Day in Pittsburgh

We really did sleep in this morning! I didn't get out of bed until 7:30am which is late for me and didn't really get going until considerably later.
We decided to take Mr Ripley with us for at least the morning part of our day. Our first stop was the Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh. It is a beautiful 36-acre park. They are doing some work on portions of the park right now so we couldn't see everything but it is very lovely and will be amazing when the work is finished. From the park there's a bridge over the Allegheny River to the other side of town. We walked over the bridge and along part of the riverwalk which has lots of grassy areas, public art and access to restaurants, bars and the football and baseball stadiums. It was a beautiful day so there were people out kayaking on the river, riding bikes along the paths, walking and running.
Our next stop was the area in Pittsburgh called The Strip District. This area was originally the city's waterfront market and today it's filled with all sorts of food-related businesses from an upscale chocolate shop to a family-run Italian market. We were in foodie heaven! Our favorite find was a place called Enrico Biscotti. It started off as a bakery specializing in biscotti then added other baked goods then came an Italian cafe and now they even make wine! All this in a tiny but super charming space. We had lunch on a little patio out front. One of the owners gave us samples of their wine and we each ordered a glass.
Everywhere we went in Pittsburgh people would stop us and want to pet Mr. Ripley. It got almost ridiculous because we couldn't get more than a few feet without someone stopping us. We think he's mighty cute but I'm worried that there must be a lack of cute pups in the Pittsburgh area since he caused such a stir.
Since we enjoyed the Strip District so much we spent quite a bit of time wandering the area and didn't leave quite enough time for some of the other things we wanted to see. We did get to the Andy Warhol Museum. Dwyne and I took turns going in because the weather was too warm to leave Mr R in the car and we didn't want to drive all the way back to the hotel. The museum was near the river walk area so whichever one of us was on dog duty could walk around there or sit on the benches. The museum was very interesting but it left me even more perplexed about how I feel about Andy Warhol and his value as an artist.
There's a place called the Mattress Factory where they have site-specific, room-size artworks by artists in residence and we really wanted to see that but by the time we got there it was closed for a private event. We were also hoping to get to the Carnegie Museum of Art but we ran out of time for that too. Although we really like Pittsburgh, the traffic is awful (even on Saturday) and it took much longer to get places than we'd expected.
We did drive around a few other neighborhoods that some people suggested we see(the people are very friendly here) and also drove up to Mount Washington for a great view of the city. We also looked for a place for dinner in our driving but didn't find anything that really "called" us (except one place with an hour wait) so we ended up at a place suggested in the Roadfood book called the Original Hot Dog Shop which was just what it sounds like and was quick, cheap and filled with local color.
Pittsburgh once had a reputation of being a drab, industrial town and would not have been somewhere I would have wanted to visit. But they have done a wonderful job of making the city into a very green, lively, interesting place. Almost everywhere we turned there was something worth seeing or doing. And Mr Ripley loved all the pats!