The Good, The Bad, and The Burgh: My Travels to Pittsburgh Part 3

When we last left, I had just arrived at the Pittsburgh airport after a harrowing day of travel, now there remained only one obstacle in my path, finding a way to get from the airport to the hotel....

SPOILER ALERT! I make it to the city in this post

Wednesday 10:30 p.m. EST Pittsburgh, PA
There were three ways for me to get from the airport to the hotel:
1. Take a twenty dollar shuttle service that went from the airport to my hotel
2. Take a cab, but as I had been informed that the airport is well outside the city (which I think is true of most airports, although I've only been to a few) would be pretty expensive
3. Take the bus, which would cost all of 3.75, but being skiddish of a city that had been defeated by my city in one of the biggest sporting events in the world, I didn't much care for this option, no matter how enthusiastic the lady on the plane seemed about it.

The buses were all covered in one word over and over again, some made sense, others didn't

Exiting the plane I decided I would just take a taxi, it would be direct, and probably safe.
However, when I got off the plane Hilary was waiting for her bags, and asked if I would like to split a cab with her because she was getting reimbursed for all of her travel expenses, and didn't want to take a cab by herself. I said that would be great, because nothing is better than having a girl pay for your cab ride, and I'm not crazy.
I went out to wait at the gate and saw that the airport was pretty much deserted, even the TGI Fridays and CNN Newsstore were closed. Hanging above the main walking escalators (I don't know really know what they're called) was a little story about the Pittsburgh Airport, it read:
Where once there was a farm (Text over big hanging picture of farm)
Now there is an airport (text over picture of current airport)
(Arrested Development anyone?)

Anyway Hilary came out of the terminal, and we introduced ourselves, because well, I'm really bad at doing that, and we began our long trek through the airport to the taxis. No joke, this was a super long trek, through terminals, past closed stores, on a monorail, down escalators, and always keeping my head up to follow signs as to where we could actually find the taxis.

This dinosaur was at the airport for no apparent reason, Pittsburgh has some odd fixation with dinosaurs I couldn't figure out

We finally made it outside and got a taxi, and talked about what we were presenting, where we were from, and what we planned to do with our lives. The taxi ride was about twenty minutes and ending up costing about $40 with tip.

[Sidenote: We also talked about Wisconsin weather sucks, me having recounted my days travel troubles, and she mentioned something about how people in Wisconsin have to plug their cars in to make sure they start in the winter when it's cold. Now I had never heard of this before, but apparently our cab driver had, and informed us this was only with diesel engines, although I still don't understand what you would plug into where? Anyone? Also when I mentioned I was an English major who didn't have a set plan for what I was going to do after college, the driver yelled back to us, "Cabs, you got cabs in your future." Apparently he had been an English major. Comforting.]

We traveled through a long tunnel and emerging on the other side was the city of Pittsburgh. In some ways it reminded me of Cincinnati, a city on the water with moderate skyscrapers and sports stadiums that were part of the cityscape. It was pretty cool to see at night.

However I could only find pics of what it looked like during the day

 We got to the Wyndam Grand Hotel where the convention was being held, and parted ways. Hilary had to check into her room, and I had had to meet the three girls who had actually made it to Pittsburgh before me at the hotel bar.

It's the yellow one in the middle

11:15 p.m. EST
I met Kellie, Kaela, and Jennifer at the hotel bar, they were already a few drinks in, and had eaten a basket of fries. I was starving and I needed a drink, but when I sat down at the bar to order, the bartender said the bar was closed. I was like, this is America right? Bartime in Pittsburgh is 11 p.m. which is like 10 p.m. central time, which, being from Wisconsin, doesn't even factor into my comprehension. I ate the little pieces of fries that were left in the basket, they were ice cold, but delicious. Kellie, Kaela, and I decided we needed to go it the streets, even though the bartender didn't seem very confident we would find someplace that was still serving.
We headed up to the room so I could unload my stuff, only to find that the bathroom had a foggy glass that was really see through type door, but mostly that wasn't a problem. Going back to the lobby we asked a the concierge if there were any bar we could go to. The concierge was named Val and went from being super helpful to super creepy in zero to sixty. He gave a us a few suggestions about places we could walk to, by a few I mean literally 2, two bars in the entire downtown of Pittsburgh that would be open at this time of night. Then he told us we really wanted to go to the Southside, that's where the action was, but we would need to take a cab. Then he took out a super cracked iPhone, like the most cracked iPhone I have ever seen.

This might actually be Val's phone

 Val was a pretty sketch character at this point, and began to write down a number on this brochure map of the city. "This is my buddy, you call him, you pay him 20 bucks, and he'll come pick you up in a stretch limo, its only a little more than a cab would be anyway." We were like gee thanks, and got the hell out of there, none of us felt that putting ourselves in a potential rape situation was a good way to start our trip.

Again, daytime shot

We decided to strike out for a bar a few blocks away called Olive or Twists, quite fitting for an English convention I must say.
The bar was alright, probably a little swank for what we were looking for, but it had booze, so it was good enough. Another thing about this bar, and Pittsburgh bars and restaurants in general is that they play just really good music. Like they were playing Arcade Fire, where in Wisconsin am I gonna find a bar playing Arcade Fire? No fucking where.
I had a few beers, and then we left, because this bar closed at 12:30 a.m. EST.

12:30 EST Streets of Pittsburgh
We headed right across the street to a pizza place that was still open, possibly the last place open in the entire city. I do not know what this place was called, but it was here I had my first truly awful pizza in my entire life. We all know the saying of pizza is like sex even when its bad its still pretty good, well this pizza disproved that theory. I couldn't even say what was so bad about it, it just sucked. However I was hungry, so we ate it, and left. We went back to the hotel and fell asleep.

There you go kids, three posts to cover one horrendous day of travel, and here's the fun part, I was there for another 4 days! More posts to come...