Last weekend in Snowy Pittsburgh

Scott and I flew to Pittsburgh last Thursday (Feb 4) with multiple purposes. He had a business appointment all day Friday, and his cousin was hosting a surprise 90th birthday party for his Aunt on Saturday. We had not been in Pittsburgh in February in almost 10 years, and were greatly looking forward to staying in the "strip district", which is where all the produce, cheese, meat, bread, fish, etc purveyors in the city are located. It has "cleaned up" a bit since I moved from Pgh in 1993, but as much fun as ever. My sweet sister took Friday off and we just walked around the strip, stopped for coffee, later stopped for lunch. And then it started snowing. Now, we knew that 4 - 8 inches of snow had been predicted from Friday to Saturday. That is not an unusual amount for Pittsburgh in February. But it really started coming down, so Annie dropped me off at the hotel and headed home. Here is what it looked like at about 4PM Friday:
Scott had just arrived at the hotel from his appointment, and we agreed that we should just order some pizza and stay in that night due to the impending storm. Well, little did we know that it would soon get worse. By 7PM, THIS is what the parking lot looked like:
By the time the storm was over the next morning, 22 inches of snow had fallen in downtown Pittsburgh. EVERYTHING was cancelled, including Aunt Betty's suprise 90th birthday party. NOTHING was open. Snow was everywhere, and it was VERY cold and windy. Since there was no restaurant in our hotel we decided to walk around the strip district to see what might be open for lunch/dinner. No sidewalks were plowed, and since we no longer own snow boots, we had to brave the elements in the shoes we had with us. Mine were clogs!!!! (Note to all: not a good shoe for the snow!) We walked several blocks - literally walking in the street - to find everything closed, including McDonalds. Since it was getting cold and our search for food seemed to be in vain, we turned down a street to go back to our hotel. And around that corner was the most beautiful site - AN OPEN RESTAURANT!!! And not just any restaurant, it was the world famous PRIMANTI BROTHERS!!! This has been featured on all the food programs. It is where you order what meat you want on your sandwich, and the rest is what makes this special: it is served on mancini bread (a pgh tradition) with vinegar slaw and french fries ON THE SANDWICH!!! Very interesting. This was the first time I had ever been there. Scott loved it, but I ordered chili as I did not think that kind of sandwich was my cup of tea. I did taste Scott's. It had kolbassi on it, which made it totally Pittsburgh for me!


We stayed there for hours, as we had no where to go and nothing else to do. It was great fun and reminded us of neighborhood dives we would visit when we were in college. Finally, it was time to leave, and it had gotten colder and windier by that time. And dark. Once again we had to walk in the street. The slush that we had walked in earlier in the day had turned a bit icy in the hours we were in Primanti Brothers. On the way back to the hotel, we saw this lone car parked across the street from our hotel. That was also what our rental car looked like in the parking lot, with snow depth well above the bottom of the car doors.




Oh - and while we were in Primanti's, Southwest Airlines called to let us know that our flight back to Nashville on Sunday (superbowl sunday, I might add) was cancelled. Scott called them and they said they could get us out MONDAY, as they had cancelled all flights out of Pittsburgh for both Saturday and Sunday. SO - intrepid traveler that he is, Scott set to work on the phone to figure out how to get us home on Sunday. Eventually he got us on flights out of Cleveland on Sunday. It seemed that EVERYTHING on the east coast was a mess for travel that weekend, so I was grateful that Scott finagled this. We drove to Cleveland on Sunday, taking our time. The roads OUTSIDE of PA were fine; the further north we went, the snow depths diminished rapidly. Our flight was totally full, and half of it with folks who had also been cancelled by Southwest for Pittsburgh departure. In the midst of all this, my sister sent me this weather forecast map, which sent us into wild laughter -We finally got home in time for SOME of the SuperBowl. It was good to be home. I had a bit of dough in the fridge when I got home, so I made some pepperoni rolls. They were so yummy, but I forgot to take a picture of them.

Next post will be very soon, with several loaves to discuss.