To prepare for our trip to Pittsburgh on March 2-4, I read two novels and one memoir featuring the city, as well as Moon Handbooks Pennsylvania – the part about Pittsburgh:
- The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
- The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
- An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
These books fueled my imagination and added depth to my visit. Two of the books talk of the elite residents and areas of Pittsburgh, while one covers the working class neighborhoods. They all three talk about the famous rivers and the impossibly hilly terrain. Annie Dillard’s book is especially good as it captures her childhood in Pittsburgh, very much like all American childhoods, but more privileged. She’s a great writer and very observant and wise about life.
We also watched the movie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which takes place in the city. The movie made me want to stand up through the sunroof of our car as we drove through the Fort Pitt Tunnel. 🙂
- “Maniac” by Michael Sembello (from the movie Flashdance)
- “America” by Simon & Garfunkel
- “I’m Not Dead (I’m in Pittsburgh)” by Frank Black
- “Wayfaring Stranger” by the The Quebe Sisters
- “Lime Hill” by Sean McDowell
These songs definitely give you a feel for industrial Pittsburgh. 🙂
I planned for us to divide our three days as follows (the first and last days would be short because of having to drive there and back):
Friday: Oakland and Points East
- Lunch at a Craig Street Eatery
- Cathedral of Learning’s Nationality Rooms at University of Pittsburgh
- Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History (mainly Natural History to see the dinosaurs)
- Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Gardens
- Frick Art & Historical Center to see the ceramic exhibit: Revive, Remix, Respond by artists “breathing new life into the ceramic medium.”
Saturday: Downtown & The Strip District / Southside & Mt. Washington
- Visit the John Heinz History Center
- Walk down The Strip & see Saints in the Strip
- Lunch at Pamela’s
- Take a self-guided walking tour downtown to see the historical buildings, making our way to Point State Park
- Go to Southside and walk down Grandview Avenue for views of the city, including Three Sisters Bridges
Sunday: North Side
- Breakfast in the Strip – try Pamela’s if line is too long on Saturday
- Andy Warhol Museum
- Mattress Factory Museum
- The Mexican War Streets
Head home!
My journal for Pittsburgh
I think I made a few too many intentions for this trip! I had ordered a voice recorder but it didn’t arrive in time, and I didn’t think to use the one on my phone until too late!
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“ANTICIPATION & PREPARATION” INVITATION: I invite you to write a 750-word (or less) post on your own blog about anticipation & preparation for a recently visited or a future particular destination (not journeys in general). If you don’t have a blog, I invite you to write in the comments. Include the link in the comments below by Thursday, April 26 at 1:00 p.m. EST. When I write my post in response to this challenge on Friday, April 27, I’ll include your links in that post. My next post will be about my upcoming road trip to the Four Corners area: Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.
This will be an ongoing invitation, bi-weekly through April, and monthly after that. Feel free to jump in at any time. 🙂 If you’d like to read more about the topic, see: journeys: anticipation & preparation.
I hope you’ll join in our community. I look forward to reading your posts!
~ wander.essence ~ 
The journal looks fabulous, Cathy. It puts my scribbles to shame. 🙂 🙂 How do you decide on an eating place? Presume you check Trip Advisor/whatever for places in the area you’re visiting that day. Have a great weekend, hon! Still grey/damp here, but I’m reliably informed that Spring arrives on Tuesday. Better get on with my house clearing. 🙂
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Thanks Jo; the pictures glued into the journal save what would otherwise be a mess! I don’t know what’s happened to my handwriting in my later years. It used to be so neat! I’m definitely a scribbler these days. As for finding places to eat, we had a guidebook that listed places to eat by neighborhood, and this one was recommended. We sometimes use Yelp to find places as well.
You have a great weekend too, Jo. What do you have planned? I’m going to Richmond this afternoon to meet up with Sarah for an early birthday celebration. I can’t believe she’ll be 34 on April 26! We’re going to do the Monument Avenue 10k Saturday morning; I’m walking and she’s running. I won’t have time to see her again before leaving for my trip, so our celebration will be tonight. Have fun cleaning house!
By the way, I hate to say it when you have grey/damp weather there, but spring arrived here yesterday, at least temporarily. It was warm, breezy and sunny, and today and tomorrow will be highs near 80F. It will get cooler again, but that’s fine by me; it’s too early to have such warm temps!
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Enjoy Sarah’s company! 🙂 🙂 No real plans but I’m hoping James will come for Sunday lunch this weekend and help me ‘eliminate’ all the stuff in his old bedroom. The rest of the house is fine but don’t look in that one! 🙂
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Thanks, Jo! We always have a good time together. Have fun with James, especially getting him to clean out his room! I still have stuff Alex left behind and Adam will also be leaving stuff behind when he leaves Monday or Tuesday. Speaking of that, I think I still have stuff at my dad’s house! 🙂
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🙂 🙂
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I used to have long lists of must see places if I went anywhere but I try to limit it now and leave time for wandering aimlessly!
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Yes, that’s a good thing to do, Gilly. I definitely like to have time to linger, and wander aimlessly. But we don’t always have that luxury. I would love to spend a month someplace and truly delve deep by just aimless wandering. 🙂
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This is one of the great delights of spending so much time in Warsaw: time to be a flâneuse!
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That’s for sure, Meg. Living abroad, or lingering in a place for long periods of time, gives you so much time to delve deep, and become an idle-woman-about-town! 🙂
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Your journal is looking good, and is inspiring me to use the one that I was given years ago, used briefly and then somehow it got forgotten about until the day before yesterday when I discovered it packed in one of the boxes that came out from the UK. I’m not sure I can be quite as thorough as you in my preparations – if I did 10 percent of what you do I’d feel very well organised and immersed in the place!
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I don’t know if you’re working while in California, but if not, you could delve deep there and find lots of amazing places, foods, entertainment, etc. I hope you’ll use the journal you found – what serendipity. 🙂
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Disappointed you didn’t do that thing in the tunnel 😉
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Me too, Anabel. It would have been crazy! It was freezing cold, so I wasn’t tempted!
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You do much more planning than we do, Cathy. How many of those things did you manage to get to?
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In Pittsburgh, we managed to squeeze in most everything, Carol, and found some surprises along the way. The only thing we couldn’t do was eat at Pamela’s (the wait was too long both times we went) and go to the Carnegie Museum. I also would have liked to explore the Mexican War Streets a little more. 🙂
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Your planning is awesome Cathy, you should’ve run a tour group company. Love how the journal is looking I like the idea of sticking in pictures. I used to plan and write lists but since the travelling with Matilda I tend nowadays to just let things happen. I do check for important things in an area then just wander. Maybe it also has to do with getting older and just generally slowing down!!!
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Oh, you set the bar so high!! The reading (“Tinkers Creek” is a favourite book) and the song list to start with. I won’t be emulating your incredibly full daily lists! My plan is a tripartite day – three separate things with rests between, which worked really well in Gdańsk. I’m beginning a list of ideas from your intentions to inform my Warsaw blogging: from this post, it’ll be a new thing; overlap between history and everyday life (easy – and horrible – in Warsaw); a building using your framework – I’d already set the intention of writing a biography of a building; and capturing the essence. I’m looking forward particularly to the use you make of your recorder when it arrives (I’ve just used voice memo to get the pronunciation of Grzegorz, the name of my Airbnb host – J has more mastery of Polish pronunciation than me: I get hung up on orthography); and to the short story you write. Your posts are really helping me clarify my journey. Mind-maps proliferate! Thank you so much for the richness of this blog.
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I looked up Tinkers Creek and I’m not sure I found the right book, Meg. Who is the author? Is it good? The tripartite day sounds like a good way to organize your day. I’m glad you are finding use for some of my intentions. I have a lot more prompts on my page under Travel Creativity: keeping a travel journal, if you’d like some more ideas. The overlap between history and everyday life in Poland must be such a dichotomy, as we found in Budapest and Prague: these modern and beautiful cities coming to age, so to speak, from a tragic history. The biography of a building sounds like an interesting approach as well. The voice recorder should be fun; I look forward to using it. I hadn’t thought of using it for pronunciation, but that’s a brilliant idea! I haven’t yet begun the short story set in Pittsburgh but I have a few ideas. Hardest for me will be writing a 1,500 word story, as most of the stories I’ve written in the past are 5-6,000 words! Enjoy those mind-maps; I love to use them too! 🙂 By the way, I ordered the book you mentioned, Shimmering in a Transformed Light, and it just arrived yesterday. I won’t have time to read it until the summer, maybe, but I look forward to it! Happy Sunday, Meg!
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Annie Dillard “Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek”. I’m a fan of books that love a place and live in it intensely. I hope “Shimmering” gives you something. It’s always a bit scary when someone acts on a recommendation!
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Oh, Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek. I do have that one on my list to read, Meg. Annie Dillard does just what you describe so perfectly: live in places intensely. Well, I’m sure I will find interesting things in Shimmering, but I honestly won’t have time to get to it for a while. I just wanted to order it while it was on my mind! Are you leaving momentarily?
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Sitting on the roof of the YHA looking over Sydney CBD after an early morning walk through Chinatown and Darling Harbour. Flight leaves in 6 hours, most of which I’ll spend at the airport. It’s hot in the city-canyons walking, but cool up here.
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I’m sure you’re on your flight at this very moment, Meg. I hope your journey is wonderful and satisfying. It sounds like you enjoyed your time in Sydney before your flight. 🙂
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I’m a bit like Gilly and Pauline nowadays. I look up places / things / restaurants I definitely want to visit and a list of places that I would like to if there is time. I am in awe of your preparations. And I agree with Meg, your blog is making me think about travel in a different way.
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I have time on my hands now that I’m not working, Jude, so I enjoy doing all this preparation and thinking how I can push myself to improve my writing and blogging, as well as my travel experiences. I’m glad you’re finding some inspiration here. Thanks for that encouragement. 🙂
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So impressed with your dedication to prepare for your Pittsburgh visit – even reading books and composing a playlist. I’ve been reading a number of books about the Camino and casually looking at a tour guide for Galicia, oh, and glancing at my Spanish phrase book. But I would have never thought about preparing like that to a nearby city or state. I bet your preparations gave you a much deeper understanding of what you actually saw when you were in Pittsburgh.
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I have so much fun preparing for a trip this way, Annette. I’ve done it this way mostly for trips abroad, but now I’m starting to do it for city trips, or any trip in the homeland. It does give me such a richer understanding of the place and helps me appreciate it so much more than if I hadn’t prepared. I love to read fiction anyway, so I just prepare my reading lists for the year to inform my upcoming travels. I’m also reading books on the Camino, including guidebooks and personal accounts, and I’ve joined the Mid-Atlantic American Pilgrims on the Camino group, which is enlightening and inspiring. Pittsburgh was loads of fun, and so was Nashville and Cape May. I prepared this way for all of them. Now I have my upcoming road trip to the Four Corners area, May 1-25. I’m driving 3 days straight to Colorado, then will do a big circle through CO, UT, AZ, and NM. I’m having so much fun preparing for that trip! Buen Camino!! When do you leave?
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Wow – 3 weeks in Four Corners – hopefully the spring flower bloom will still be in force! I’m leaving in two weeks.
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So you’re leaving around the same time as I am, it sounds like. May 1 is my departure date. I hope to find all kinds of amazing things, plus I just got a new wide angle lens so I’m excited to try it out. 🙂
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[…] by and written for Wander.Essence‘s beautiful “ANTICIPATION & PREPARATION” series. Check her out, she not only has the most amazing pictures, but she has […]
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Great fun, Shia. You have such great turns of phrase and such a funny way of telling a tale. I really enjoyed it. I’ll link it to my April 27 post. 🙂
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Thank you for inspiring me to write it! When I marveled over your preparations and beautiful journals and playlists (!!!) I couldn’t help but be struck by the contrast to our customary … errr, organized bedlam. Which sparked a light bulb, which culminated in a blog post 😊
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I’m so glad you were inspired, Shia. When my kids were younger, believe me, our trips were not as well-planned and organized as they are now. We also flew by the seat of our pants in those days. So, I’m glad you wrote this down. One of these days, when your kids are grown and gone, you’ll be happy to read over it. I never did this and now it’s all lost! 🙂
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Such a great way to plan… reading fiction, watching a movie, and creating a playlist. I love that approach to a holiday… it’s awakening a few senses and adds cultural depth to your experience. Well done!
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Thanks so much, Sheri. I’ve found that immersing myself in a place and culture before traveling there does add so much depth to my experience. I hope to continue to do it. It also means I’m traveling all the time, whether I’m at home or on the go. 🙂
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That’s an interesting way of putting it. I quite like the idea of travelling all the time, even when at home.
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Me too, Sheri. I feel like I’m on a perpetual journey. Ah, but isn’t that life? 🙂
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I wouldn’t have it any other way. I know the phrase “lifelong learning” is over used to the point that it has become trite, but I truly feel that that’s key to who I am.
I want to keep learning about this incredible world in which we live. I want to keep asking questions, I want to keep being surprised by the things I find out and experience, and I want to keep meeting fascinating people with differing perspectives. All of this makes a life enriched and rewarding.
(They key is remembering it all as we age… something I’m afraid isn’t happening! 🤭But I still believe that this learning… this attitude and outlook on life … is woven into the fabric of who I am and how I experience this world.)
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I feel the same, Sheri. The day we stop learning about the world, and growing as people, then we might as well throw in the towel. I hope to never stop myself.
Thanks so much for sharing your enthusiasm about life and learning and the journey you are on. You’re inspiring. 🙂
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