Pittsburgh in 27

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Sara and I went to Pittsburgh this weekend. The main motivation for our trip was shopping at IKEA (can you believe this is the closest one to us!?) but we also hit up a couple other fun places during our trip. I think the best way to share is to start at the top and run you through our crazy 27 hours! Beware, there are lots of photos in this post!

We left around 3pm and drove the 3 hours to Pittsburgh. It was a pretty easy drive, and the only part that got a little crazy was once we got into the city the traffic got heavy. We found our hotel after a confusing few minutes with the GPS (when streets are overtop one another the GPS gets confused!) and then we went off in search of somewhere to eat dinner.

Enter Rock Bottom! 

If you've never been to a Rock Bottom, its a restaurant/Brewery with lots of fun meal and appetizer options and lot of beers to compliment your meal.

I ended up settling on lobster and shrimp enchiladas, which came with a side of beans and rice. My favorite part was the blue corn tortillas- so good!

Sara had their Chicken Mac and Cheese, which was served with breadcrumbs on top and a side of crusty bread.

After that filling meal, we set about to walk around the mall/shopping plaza that the restaurant was in. Right next door was a small building that was painted black and said "Sing Sing" on the front. We had no idea what it was, so Sara went into find out. It turns out that Sing Sing is a dueling piano bar where different musicians take turns in pairs playing requests and sometimes hauling people from the audience up on stage. It is a really popular venue for Bachelorette parties and birthdays apparently. The show runs from 8pm-2am, but we only stayed until midnight as we were tired from the drive. 

While the show was a little vulgar at times, other than that we had a great time. The musicians were really talented, playing and singing dozens of songs from memory. If you are in the Pittsburgh area and enjoy music, I highly recommend this place!

Sunday morning we took our time getting ready and heading down for our continental breakfast. The first thing we planned to do was the Pittsburgh Public Market, which didn't open until 10am. We checked out of our hotel and drove to a different part of the city for the market, which ended up being a little confusing to find. After wandering around a bit we found a bunch of vendors outside a strip of shops, so we wandered through and checked out the displays. There were fresh fruit and vegetable vendors, a stand giving away free samples of hummus and pretzels, lots of new age stores, funky clothes and accessories, and lots of Pittsburgh pirates gear. 

We realized when we had hit all the places and walked back to my car that the ACTUAL market was in the loading docks/storage strip we had parked in front of. We felt a little silly, but all the garage like doors were closed and we had no idea it was inside the warehouse looking building. Oh well!

Next we hit up a little bookstore/cafe called The Big Idea Cooperative Bookstore and Cafe. It was a neat little place, but we didn't end up buying anything. 

We also stopped at a Yarn Store called Natural Stitches for a few minutes, and I bought some yarn for an upcoming Christmas gift.

Pittsburgh is a really interesting city with neat architecture. I didn't snap a lot of photos since I drove, but here is one I caught while we were sitting at a red light. 

The rest of our agenda took us out of the city, so before we left we drove up to two of the overlooks and got some great photos of the city.

After our little touristy stop at the overlooks we headed out of town toward IKEA. Our first stop however was sone lunch in the form of Coldstone ice cream :) 

I promise, Sara had ice cream too! It made a great lunch.

Then we headed to IKEA! Here were a couple of things that caught my eye:

I didn't end up buying much, but it was great to be able to go and see a lot of the items in person. I think either an online order or another trip to Pittsburgh is in order though!

After wandering around IKEA for a while (the building is huge!) we took our finds to the car, said goodbye to Pittsburgh, and headed home. All in all it was a great trip! Sara is an awesome person to road trip with, and even though it was short trip we packed a lot in. Yay for good friends and fun trips!