Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. At least until tomorrow, I love ya, you’re always a day away. Tomorrow we gird our loins for the nine plus hour drive home, where our thought’s escaping.
But today we enjoyed Pittsburgh. We rode up the Duquesne Incline to Mt Washington where we discovered a fabulous view of the city and that everything was closed except a coffee shop and an ice cream store. Given that it was before noon, we opted for coffee and a chat with the proprietor and two of his cronies.
Despite our lunch plans being dashed, we pivoted without remorse and drove off in search of the Strip, another of Pittsburgh’s many, many neighborhoods, for lunch and a stroll to gawk at the shops. Mostly it was places that sold Steelers gear (good thing I knew that the terrible in terrible towel is not about the actual quality but instead some ineffable quality that only a true Steeler fan understands, oh, this just in it was a radio station marketing gimmic) or pandemic wear, but there was also a candy store (and yes, it also sold fudge).
Then it was off to enjoy the sylvan delights of Schenley Park. Let me just take a moment to again comment on driving in Pittsburgh but this time I’d like to point out that when you put a destination in the map app it provides three routes, all of which involve crossing at least one bridge, all take completely different approaches, and yet arrive within minutes of each other – but none are direct and all take far longer than the distance would imply.
The weather threatened rain all day, so after napping – finally something that resembles the retirement I anticipated – we set off to find an open restaurant before the sky’s opened up. We had passed by Cappy’s several times and always mentally inserted an extra letter, but tonight we decided beggars can’t be choosers so Cappy’s it was. Another great dive bar experience, as we were able to eat light (and tasty!), had a nice chat about this and that with the staff – including how one of them got to shake Lou Brock’s hand when Lou was here visiting a relative, and then the shaker of Lou’s hand even chased after us for several blocks because somehow I left my credit card behind. I think with that the trip is complete.
The couple we met in the finger lakes told us to go up the Duquesne, not the Monongahela Incline because the view was better so we did, but we wound up walking along the top over to the other one where this picture was taken
Here is the view of the three rivers: Ohio to the left, formed by the Allegheny to the top and Monongahela to the right. This is the view from the top of the Duquesne Incline
Three flavors of bacon soda – plain, with chocolate, and with maple – and I didn’t buy any. MBH thought this is where chopped got all their weird soda flavors because they had plenty of weird “who would drink that” flavors unlike the bacon ones
