Monday, March 6, 2017

Pittsburgh Shenanigans

I've been making a concerted effort to take a weekend trip every month, and so far it is definitely working out! I recently visited my friends Alexa and Jack in Pittsburgh, a city I had no idea was such fun until I went for the first time last summer. That visit had only been about 13 hours-a pit stop on my drive down to visit my mom and that whole side of the family in North Carolina-so I knew I needed to make it back for a full weekend. Alexa and I were roommates her first summer (my second) working at camp, so we've got about seven years of memories and friendship.
Given our shared love of craft beer, she invited me down to attend the Pittsburgh Winter Beer Festival (thankfully held inside the Convention Center there). Boy oh boy was it fun-which is clearly indicated by the lack of photos I took. However, we did take a before and after...I'm pretty impressed at how well we held it together! Apart from the delicious variety of beers, a highlight was definitely the silent disco. They had three channels available on the headphones, so we weren't all dancing to the same music at all times, though there were certain songs we ensured everyone heard! Nobody else was quite as excited for "Footloose" as I was though, ha.
A lot of our time was spent enjoying delicious food, of course-brunch and all other delicious food is a priority for all three of us. I'll save that for another post, though, for those of you more interested in the city than pictures of everything I ate.

If you do visit Pittsburgh, I highly recommend a walk through the Mt. Washington district. There is an option to ride the trolley up and down the mountain as the miners did, though we just opted to drive up and walk around. There are numerous beautiful views of the city, though Alexa was quick to point out that they are much better when the vegetation is green-the end of winter is maybe not ideal. She was full of fun facts everywhere we went, including that Pittsburgh has the most bridges of any city in the world, including Venice! This area also includes some really interesting architecture and demonstrations of the class divide. The houses and buildings overlooking the river were beautiful, well maintained, and obviously very expensive. When we walked two blocks over the houses were significantly more run-down and clearly inhabited by those not in the 1%. Gentrification is real, people-it's only a matter of time before those two blocks change.

While Jack had to work Sunday night, Alexa and I attempted to see the tour of Book of Mormon-unfortunately there were no tickets to be had, either legitimate or scalped. We thought about going to a comedy show, but given her cold and the excitement of the night before, we decided to pick up a couple hot chocolates and head home to do some yoga and watch a movie. I'm so happy to finally have seen Brooklyn-and not just because Alexa and I had a good laugh about how I would have been the same person as the main character had I been living in that time period. It was a truly lovely story with the most beautiful cinematography-I think it has earned a place in my go-to movies.


While it can be difficult to live far from so many of my friends, I am beyond grateful to have them in fun cities and the opportunity to visit them and try new things. I'm already looking forward to my next trip to Pittsburgh-and theirs to Boston/Providence!

xoxoxo
Emma





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