Surprisingly, Pittsburgh takes the cake
Visit Pittsburgh to celebrate Andy Warhol and Prantl’s famous cake
If you’re planning a trip to Pittsburgh, you’ll need to learn a few things. Yinz is local for y’all. Carnegie is pronounced CarNAY-gie (as in Andrew Carnegie, who made a fortune in Pittsburgh’s steel industry). And you don’t get french fries WITH your sandwich at Primanti’s. You get fries ON your sandwich.
The city offers plenty for sports fans: Pirates baseball, Steelers football, Penguins hockey. But you can also build an itinerary around food and the arts.
FOOD
Primanti’s sandwiches and Prantl’s famous cake are hardly Pittsburgh’s only classic local eats. The best way to start your day here is with breakfast at Pamela’s, preferably a crepelike pancake stuffed with strawberries, brown sugar and sour cream.
Besides Primanti’s, another oldschool sandwich with a twist is found at Max’s Allegheny Tavern in Deutschtown. Here you can get a sandwich served on potato pancakes instead of bread.
The Strip District is lined with ethnic food markets and specialty shops, from La Prima, which serves Italian coffee and pastries, to Penn Mac for cheese. The neighbourhood comes alive with shoppers on Saturday mornings.
At the Conflict Kitchen, located in Schenley Plaza near the University of Pittsburgh, the ever-changing breakfast-and-lunch menu is inspired by the cuisine of places that have been in conflict with the U.S., like Iran and Cuba. Seating is outdoors, so go on a nice day.
THE ARTS
The seven-storey Warhol Museum traces artist Andy Warhol’s life from his childhood as the son of working-class immigrants to his emergence as an influential figure in pop art and underground culture in the 1960s and ’70s. Gallery displays explain the impact and genius of his work, including his famous images of Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s soup cans.
The museum’s also a heck of a lot of fun. You can bat enormous Mylar balloons around; lounge on sofas while gazing at Warhol’s massive silkscreened celebrity portraits; or watch video interviews — some mesmerizing, some downright wacky — that Warhol produced for a TV project.
Another place that makes art fun is the Mattress Factory. Installations include polka-dot-and-mirrored rooms created by Yayoi Kusama.
Nearby is Randyland, an outdoor park-like space crammed with art, signs and other colourful objects. House Poem on Sampsonia Way decorated with Chinese calligraphy, is part of City of Asylum, which provides sanctuary and forums for exiled writers.
A gigantic model of a Diplodocus dinosaur known as Dippy sits outside the Carnegie museum and library complex. The Carnegie Museum of Art’s treasures include Giacometti’s Walking Man and Van Gogh’s patterned pastel Wheat Fields after the Rain. The Carnegie Museum of Natural History is known for its T. Rex.
The University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning Tower has 30 Nationality Rooms — Korean, Ukrainian, Welsh and more.
Downtown, stop by PPG Place, with its 231 castle-like glass spires, and the August Wilson Center, housed in a striking silvery building designed to evoke a slave ship. The centre hosts an exhibit of props and images from the film version of Wilson’s play Fences.
The Oscar-winning movie Fences was shot in Pittsburgh, not far from Wilson’s childhood home in the Hill District. The home is being renovated and is scheduled to open to the public in 2018. Also in the Hill District is a historic mark for Josh Gibson, the powerhitting Negro Leagues baseball player whose story is mentioned in Fences.
RIVERS, HILLS AND LIGHTS
Pittsburgh is a city of hills, rivers and bridges (446 of them). At Point State Park downtown, you can see the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers as they flow into the Ohio River.
For a fun ride and spectacular view, take a funicular up to Mount Washington. At night, from the top, you’ll see those rivers and bridges amid a sea of city lights twinkling like a million stars.