Pittsburgh’s SouthSide Works

After our morning at The Strip, we rode the double-decker bus through downtown, across the Monongahela River and hopped after at area called SouthSide Works.  It seemed to be a newer part of town- with fancy chain restaurants and high-end stores.  There was a nice park area & families were out enjoying the gorgeous weather.

We decided it was time for another drink stop & the Hofbrau Pittsburgh looked like the perfect place.  There’s actually one in Houston & we’ve never been.

It was situated on the river, so we opted to sit out on the patio & enjoy some fresh air.

The thing about Hofbrauhaus’ is they are fashioned after their namesake brewery near Munich, Germany.  The inside reminds me of German tavern (as if I’ve ever been!).  They had some like music going and the beer brewing.

All the lovely ladies were in appropriate attire. We had another rounds of drinks & a little dessert to keep us going.

Then we made a fateful mistake.  Instead of waiting for the bus to circle around, we decided we’d just walk to the next stop.  It didn’t look TOO far on the not-t-scale map. Anyways, we ended up walking about 3 MORE miles, in the blazing sun, with temps in the mid-90′s, no water & no idea what was going on.   The first hour was pretty interesting & we passed some more “authentic” parts of Pittsburgh- such as these neat row homes.

We started seeing more neat grafitti on some of the walls & were just glad not to be wandering around at night.

We then ended up walking through an area that appeared have more of a college vibe.  I have no idea if we were near one at all, but there were lots of little nitch shops and casual bars.

Lots of people cruising up and down the street, checking out the shops, bars & crowds.

We felt like we were getting close to civilization again when we started crossing the bridges back towards downtown.

I loved all the old brick buildings & the random shops.  If I’d known the 2nd half of our walking journey was going to be so miserable, I’d have insisted we stopped and stayed in Margaritaville.

More very neat bridges- I was just amazed at how perfectly placed into town (or the town around them) they were.  No sweeping, long approaches or long spans leading up to the river.

This part of the walk was a blur- we were trudging through some very shady parts of town but at least felt like we were getting close to our destination of Station Square.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Grandpa turned 83 years old yesterday!  His  mental health has been in a severe decline the last few years, but he is still very happy to see me.