So I’m a student at a college about 50 miles away from Pittsburgh in a small town. I’ve been here for a month and, sadly, I’m running out of entertainment options that do not involve alcohol (being the sort of person who is generally a law-abiding citizen). This distresses me greatly. So I thought, hey, why not see what this conveniently located large city has to offer? This is where I beg for advice, as I’ve never actually been there before.
Now, I can find someone with a car who’s willing to go along with me to Pittsburgh, so that’s not a big problem. The problem is finding something to do that is not too expensive and interesting enough for two college students. Museums are great, music is great (I’m not much for the club scene myself, though), whatever. If it’s remotely considered fine art, I can find someone to drag there.
I’m also interested in restaurant recommendations (especially ethnic food…I’d never craved Indian food before until I absolutely couldn’t get any), random stuff I ought to see, any tips for navigating through the city and not ending up in scary ghettos, and whatever else you can offer.
During a recent trip, my husband and I visited the Mattress Factory, which was really fun. They were in the middle of changing the exhibits so there wasn’t much to see at that time. Link. I’d give them a call to find out if everything is up and running.
The zoo is fun, of course. I can’t comment on ethic food, since all I ate during the entire trip was pierogies. But if you like pierogies I can recommend several places, but they were all bars.
This will take you to my thread where I was asked for vacation advice for a trip to Pittsburgh. There are some great suggestions there that I did not have the time to take advantage of.
Get yourself near the C.M.U. campus, there are WONDERFUL Indian and Thai and other Asian restaurants to be found. The Museum there is beautiful and well laid out. Squirrel Hill is close by with nice shopping and THE LARGEST vinyl record shop I’ve ever seen- Jerry’s Records on Murray Ave.
The Carnegie Science Center is a fantastic museum.
Just outside Pittsburgh, in Canonsburg, is a lovely amusement place called the Challenge Center. Remember “American Gladiators”? You can do those sorts of things there.
PNC Park just topped ESPN’s survey of all 30 Major League Stadiums. If you enjoy baseball at all, take in a game there.
There’s dollar theater at Carnegie Mellon University. Usually the popular ones show on the weekends; weekdays we get stuff like Cemetary Man (which ruled). Oh, and every good thing said about the museums around here is absolutely true. Hell, bring some fresh fruit and I’ll show you around myself.
[sub]I’m not a shill for the CMU film people, I swear…[/sub]
Knew I should’ve gone to Carnegie Mellon…but I have a scholarship here and I’m rather fond of my university, even if it is in an excruciatingly small town, so there you are.
Thank you all for the suggestions so far. I’d actually had my eye on the Warhol museum for a while (even managed to round up a decent-sized crowd to come along if we could acquire a car), but one of my professors is arranging a trip there soon, so I’ll just go with my class.
I should also mention that none of my friends are locals, so it’s probably best to keep it as close to Pittsburgh as possible. We get lost easily. (Like the 6 hour trip to the outskirts of the city I took with a friend on Labor Day. It was not supposed to take more than 3.)
A trip to the 'burg would not be complete without a ride on the Incline.
Go walk around the Point.
Get thyself the the Carnegie museums, both art and natural history.
Eat a Pimanti Brother’s sandwich.
Visit the Monroeville Mall, site of the classic zombie flick “Dawn of the Dead”. Well, okay that probably only interested me and the mall has changed considerably since then anyway. No more ice-rink… sniff
Spend the day in Kennywood.
It is a great town, very diverse and with a great feel to it.
Our general rule when living there was, “if you can see it in front of you, you can’t get there from here.”
On to suggestions, I mostly hung out in Oakland & Shadyside, but the South Side is pretty popular too, as is Station Square. They tend to be pretty crowded though. For artsy stuff, the Carnegie museums should occupy you for quite a while.
Out of curiousity, direction are you from the city? 50 miles north, west?
Oh, dear, you will get lost. It’s not hard. I recommend maps, and lots of them. Or just resign yourself to becoming lost, and enjoy the trip. The scary ghettos aren’t too bad.
You wouldn’t happen to be at a school 50 miles northwest of the city, would you?
It’s “Primanti” Brothers, and yes, do not pass it up. Also make sure to get some fries at The O. Well I guess “some” isn’t really an option, though, even their “small” will feed 4 or 5 people.
For dessert, try Dave and Andy’s homemade ice cream, in Oakland or Station Square.
Get a Benkovitz’s fish sandwich. Forget about maps, you’ll do better with dead reckoning. Pittsburgh is composed of isolated neighborhoods separated by rivers, hills, tracks and freeways and united by common sports teams.
Mapquest will really mess you up in Pittsburgh because their maps are only two dimensional.
This is no joke. I went there for a job interview, and because of construction, the shuttle from Station Square to the airport crossed the river at bridge A, then went over to bridge B and crossed back over the river, somehow looped around and recrossed at bridge B, then went down and crossed back at bridge A again. The driver assured us she wasn’t lost, and that this was the easiest way. It was a fixed rate, so we took her word for it!
Northeast of the city. Might be closer to 60 miles, actually, but it’s close enough.
Getting lost in the city is not a big deal. It’s getting lost on the way and going on an extended tour of the backwoods of PA that is the problem. My friends and I are fine with driving randomly around large cities – that’s fun (assuming we have plenty of time to do so). But if we have to hit every tiny borough, village, hamlet, and whatever else that you can possibly call a collection of people larger than 2 on the way there, we’re not going to be very happy.
But I’m taking notes! Food suggestions are good! Thank you!
I would recommend just wandering around Squirrel Hill as they’ve got a lot of interesting shops and restaraunts.
The Carnegie is good, I never was into the Warhol. The Matress Factory is sometimes really neat, sometimes totally strange.
You can always check out the Pittsburgh Public Theater. www.ppt.org - catch a play some weekend.
If you need directions or a guide, I’m good at both. I generally know the really good small restaraunts for certain things too, aside from Indian, which I really have no taste for. I dunno why.
D’oh, that reminds me, HideoHo, sorry I didn’t get back to you about this past Saturday-I didn’t check my e-mail because of all the virus spam I’ve been getting!
I’m at IUP. HideoHo guessed right. I’m still not used to people knowing of my school (obviously, I’m also not local), so I don’t usually bring it up. Not worth the general effort involved in getting the name and location across properly.