It’s been years since I traveled to Pittsburgh. President’s Day Weekend seemed like a good time to check out the museums and the town. Hotels.com found us a cheap sleep up by the airport, three nights for the price of one night at a downtown hotel – hey, I like it already. Downtown Pittsburgh looks great. You head south toward the city, snake through the Fort Pitt tunnel past a waterfall of ice formations, and boom – downtown springs up like a pop-up book, surrounded by yellow bridges.

What I liked best: a tourist can’t get lost in Pittsburgh. There’s great signage throughout the city, arrows pointing out all its funky neighborhoods. (Cleveland, take note.) We didn’t even need a map except for the tourist giveaway insert. All the attractions – museums, shopping, theater, neighborhoods – are clearly marked with special signs, making it easy to explore.

Spent nearly a full day at the Carnegie Museums up in the university district. The art museum has some nice stuff in the permanent collection, but it’s not a patch on Cleveland’s breadth and depth. But the Carnegie International, a huge contemporary exhibition, had rooms and rooms of cutting-edge art. One admission gets you into both the art museum and natural history museum, adjacent buildings, which made it easy to see both. There's a fun "do-it-yourself dinosaur dig" for the kids. (Giving four year olds real chisels? Their insurance better be good.) A full day at the Andy Warhol Museum was even better, seven floors of a converted department store. It's a swell museum of contemporary art and culture and film, with a terrific 10th anniversary special show. In among the big name artists, they mixed a few installations by area art students – a nice touch. http://www.warhol.org

Station Square is a lot like the Flats – undistinguished chain restaurants along a short river walk, with covered shops in a converted train station. But on a Saturday afternoon it was mobbed -- at 5:15 pm, there was a two and a half hour wait at most places. (The Chinese restaurant, the only non-chain, had decent food and no wait.) Better bets for food are the many restaurants in the walking neighborhoods – Oakland (near the museums) or Squirrel Hill (think Cleveland Hts.) Finished with a pilgrimage through an enormous Ikea store. We’ll be back.
from Cool Cleveland contributor Linda Eisenstein linda@coolcleveland.com

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