The next morning, I went to some early sessions at the conference and then met Holly for a late breakfast back at Alihan’s Coffee and Breakfast. This time, we each had their mushroom and veggie crepe and shared a pot of Turkish tea. As with the night before, we both loved the presentation.
During an afternoon break, I went over to Union Station to see if they had any early morning food options. Our train home on Sunday was at 7:30 am. I was surprised to see that it is actually closed during the day and open only from 6:00 pm until 7:45 am. Basically, once the train back to Philadelphia leaves for the day, they close. Other than vending machines, they didn’t offer any food options.
While I was there, I took a few photos with my phone. It was a dreary day, but I was still able to get some OK pictures.
That night, we went to Bakersfield for dinner. They are basically a taco place and the food was great but the service was a little weird. We weren’t even done eating when the waiter brought us our check. He said we were welcome to order more but it didn’t feel that way.
We were hoping to meet up with a friend of ours who was also in town for the conference, but, alas, we weren’t able to coordinate getting together.
On Saturday, the conference had only morning sessions so we had the afternoon to ourselves. We bought timed tickets to the Andy Warhol Museum for that afternoon. We left a little early to have some time to walk around taking pictures. It was rather cold and windy so we didn’t want to be out too long, but we did take a nice walk along part of the North Shore walk along the Allegheny.
We specifically wanted to see PNC Park. Holly and I both enjoy baseball and would have loved if the conference were a few weeks later when there might have been the game. But at least we got to see the outside of the stadium and get pictures of some of the statues of famous Pittsburgh Pirates: Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, Honus Wagner, and Bill Mazeroski.
After walking around in the cold, we were glad to get inside the museum. Since it was Saturday, the museum was really crowded and quite warm (yes, I went from complaining about the cold to complaining about the heat). I enjoyed the museum but would have enjoyed it even more if we had been able to get there at a time when it wasn’t so busy.
We had tentative plans to see one of my cousins who lives in the area, but we decided to cancel. I was exhausted from my busy few days at the conference and we had to catch an early train on Sunday. I feel bad about not making more of an effort to see her and her family but I needed an early night.
Since we thought we had other plans, Holly and I hadn’t even thought about where to go for dinner. We looked into a couple of places and tried to make reservations but every place was booked. Since we knew we wanted an early night and had enjoyed our brief visit to Talia, we decided to show up there right when they opened at 5:00 and grab a seat at the bar. They didn’t have any available dinner reservations either.
Our plan worked. We were able to get seats at the bar right at 5:00 and were glad we got there when we did. The bar was full probably by 5:15.
The good impression we had when we stopped in for a cocktail was correct. We really enjoyed our dinner. We shared a couple of appetizers, broccolini and focaccia with a butternut squash dip. I had the rigatoni with vodka sauce, sausage, and peas. Holly ordered the orecchiette with rotisserie chicken, Calabrian chili, tomato, cream, and smoked mozzarella.
Not only was our dinner delicious, but we were back in our room by about 7:00 and got to bed early for our train ride home.
As I mentioned, I found out that there wasn’t any food available at the train station other than from the vending machines.
While we were out and about on Saturday, we saw that the bagel shop attached to our hotel opened at 6:00 am on Sundays. We double-checked Google which confirmed they opened that early. We had to leave for the train station by 6:30 so figured stopping to get a couple bagel sandwiches for the ride would be perfect.
We grabbed our luggage, checked out of the hotel, and went to get our breakfast, but the bagel shop was not open as promised. We went back into the hotel and went to their coffee shop which had just opened. Luckily, they had some decent choices so we were each able to get some yogurt and a pastry.
The ride home was as pleasant as the ride there but without any delays.
I took a few photos out of the window with my Samsung S9+.
We got back to our apartment around 4:00, dropped off our luggage, and went across the street to SouthGate for some comfort food after our long day of travel.
I liked what I got to see of Pittsburgh and wish I had a little more time to sightsee. The train there was the longest train ride I had ever taken. I’ve taken the train up to Boston a handful of times and that trip is about 6 hours. I enjoyed the long ride. It might be worth taking that trip again to see my cousin and time it so we can also get to a Pirates game.
- Pittsburgh Trip 2023 Flickr Album
- Pittsburgh Trip 2023 Part 1
- Pittsburgh Trip 2023 Part 2
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