Conventional Pittsburgh

Introduction

I am web and software developer by trade, with one specialty in the Drupal content management system. The annual conference was in Pittsburgh this year, an easy drive for me, so I opted to make a trip out of it, taking a few extra days to see the city.

Attractions

River Walk

Pittsburgh has a lovely river walk that winds all around downtown. It was actually possible to take it more or less all the way from the convention center to my hotel miles away. These pictures show the area between the convention center and the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers merge to become the Ohio.

Campus

Carnegie Mellon University has one of the more beautiful campuses I have seen. The mix of old buildings gives it an almost Hogwarts feel, but with a hint of Pittsburgh Steel. The main quad is surrounded with fountains, interesting eateries, ping pong tables, a carousel and museums.

Carnegie Museums

The Carnegie Museums of Natural History and Art are connected, allowing you to get into both for one admission fee. You can easily spend hours in each.

On the natural history side, they have the best collection of dinosaur fossils anywhere in the world. I found the hall of minerals and gemstones to be particularly nice as well. Upstairs, they had halls of bugs and birds as well as dioramas of other animals in their habitats.

On the art side, they had a lot of interesting, more modern exhibits. I think many classical art museums fall into this trap of being stuffy, featuring a bunch of expressionless europeans in silly outfits. This museum had a mix of ancient sculpture, modern design, and 20th century art. I particularly liked the design galleries, that focus on unusual or important design of everyday things (chairs, bookshelves, desks, etc).

Lodging & Area

After some deliberation, I chose to stay in the Hyatt House on the south side. This hotel was fairly far from downtown, but it was only category 2, and it was in an interesting neighborhood. The main alternatives were a Hyatt near the baseball stadium (cat 3) or a few IHGs where I would need to have paid $30+/night to park. This hotel had cheaper pay parking, but as a Globalist, I always get free parking on award stays.

The rooms in this Hyatt House were actually quite nice, with a full kitchen plus island, separate living room, and a large bathroom. I haven’t stayed in many Hyatt Houses, but the rooms were the nicest I’d seen so far.

The lobby placement on the second floor is a little odd and you either need to take a flight of stairs or an elevator that only goes between the garage and lobby. The hotel sits in an entertainment district that is only a few blocks from some sketchy parts of town so I suspect the second floor lobby is a way to isolate it from any street level antics.

Around the Hotel

The immediate area around the hotel is a revitalized entertainment district. There’s breweries, a Pins arcade, food trucks and a dog park. A river walk and bike route passes right by the hotel, leading all the way to downtown, passing by a marina and a Kroger not to far away. Fred Rogers Productions is actually located about two blocks away and they have a T-Rex out front dressed up as Mr. Rogers.

If you walk about 4-5 blocks toward the main drag, you start to get into some more transitional areas of town. This feels like an area where you could encounter anything, the best music and food in town alongside an altercation with the police.

Cost Summary

Overall, if was a pretty cheap stay for a conference, and I had a good time exploring the city.

• $30 in gas
• 5 Hyatt nights @ 40k