We had Steeler tickets for today’s game, so we headed to Pittsburgh yesterday morning. I like going down the day before for two reasons. 1. we don’t have such a long day on Sunday. 2. I don’t like driving to Pittsburgh so this gives us an opportunity to do more than just go to the game while we’re there.
I didn’t make our reservations early enough, so the only place I could find that had an opening was The Priory. As it turns out, it was a really nice hotel–a little fancier than we’re used to, but nice. It was a former monastery, so that was kind of neat. There was one drawback–they have a wedding hall there and a wedding took place yesterday. After the wedding was over (11pm) a bunch of revelers hung out in the courtyard until almost 3am and they were LOUD. Jake slept through the whole thing. I slept through most of it. But, it had Brian up for the last 2 hours of it. It didn’t occur to him to call the front desk and complain (I guess we’re not a bunch of complainers), but he did mention it when we checked out this morning. Needless to say, guests are not allowed in the courtyard at that time of the day, so the night manager is going to have their fingers rapped with a ruler the next time he or she shows up for work.
After checking into the hotel, we hoofed over to the Carnegie Science Center and let Jake play in the SportsWorks exhibit all afternoon. After bitching about walking all the way there (it was about 1.5 miles), what do you think his favorite thing was? The treadmill. I kid you not. We really, really wanted to see BODIES…The Exhibition, which is also set up in the SportsWorks building, but it is not open to the general public until the 8th, so I guess we’ll be making another trip to Pittsburgh to see that.
We went back to the hotel for a few minutes, enjoyed a complimentary glass of wine in the courtyard, and then went looking for a place to eat supper. We ended up at Max’s Allegheny Tavern, a German restaurant/bar. It was pretty good–they had quite a menu. There was a bit of a wait before we were seated because it is apparently hot spot before the Pens games, but other than that it was just fine.
After dinner we went back to the hotel and read books and watched TV. A few hours of that made us bored and sleepy so we were all in bed well before 11.
This morning, we grabbed a little bite to eat at the continental breakfast provided by the hotel and headed to the Jerome Bettis Grille 36 restaurant, where we were meeting Brian’s parents and our niece at 10am. This restaurant was quite good as well–they had a nice variety on the menu and it made it hard to choose. We hung out here until game time and then went to the stadium. As soon as we sat down I knew we were going to be in for a long afternoon. It had to be 90 degrees outside. It was so hot that it made the game unpleasant to watch. I sat baking in the sun as long as I could and then Jake had to go to the bathroom, so I volunteered to take him just to get out of the sun. I sat and baked some more and then it was halftime. We all went to the concourse to get out of the sun. The kids and I stayed there for most of the 3rd quarter because none of us wanted to sit in the sun any longer. By the time we got back to our seats, Brian was talking about leaving early. We ended up leaving with about 5 minutes remaining. The game was all but wrapped up (the Steelers beat the Seahawks 21-0), so I was on board. We had to walk all the way back to the hotel to get the car and then we got the hell out of dodge. I don’t know how we managed this, but we got out of the city very quickly and didn’t really hit any traffic to speak of. At least the Steelers won today. I would have hated to sit through all of that for a loss. So, this was not one of the better games I’ve been to, but I’m sure I won’t forget it.