Travel to Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania – Episode 621

Robert Shields

Chis,

Just listened to your episode on Pittsburgh. As it is my hometown, I was skeptical of what might be included or missed. I am happy to report it was a fantastic starting point for someone to visit our great town. I thought Tom did a great job of highlighting many of our treasures. One thing that I think should be mentioned is that Pittsburgh is the terminus of the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal Trails. These are rails to trails that you can take from/to Pittsburgh from Washington, DC by bicycle (or foot). It is a fantastic way to see our country and some of the trail is serviced by Amtrak if you want to break it up a bit. Thanks again for the episode and for all your great podcasts!

Cheers,

Robert

chris2x

Oh interesting, I did not know about the Canal Trails but that makes sense given Pittsburgh’s history.

Joanna Jones

Great podcast! But as a Western PA (Franklin) native I was bummed you left out another great Oil Country museum, totally unique in the entire United States. Franklin is the county seat of Venango County, and home to the DeBence Antique Music World museum. It’s three floors of rare and unique mechanical musical objects — lots and lots of band organs (the thing inside a carousel), giant music boxes,e tc.. If you were going from Pittsburgh to Erie, you’d be right there in this great little Victorian town. Here’s a link:

http://debencemusicworld.com/

chris2x

Bob emailed me:

Hello Chris, I’ve been listening a long time and think it’s about 7 years now. I enjoyed the recent podcast about Western PA, and having recently visited the area in/around Pittsburgh myself wanted to add something that I believe is relevant. Pennsylvania and Western PA in particular are well known for the historic covered bridges that abound. We used the Washington PA area as our home base on our recent trip, it’s about 30 miles or so southwest of the Pittsburgh area. The number of covered bridges very nearby the Washington area is incredible and there were 4 different driving routes that can easily be followed that will take a visitor from one covered bridge to the next in succession. We covered just one of those routes one afternoon for just under 2 hours, seeing 4 different historic covered bridges. For most of your listeners who are not from the Northeast seeing these bridges is probabaly a new experience as it was for us.

Bob

Kyle

I think that a couple of big omissions were:

1. The University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning. It’s a 42-story late-gothic cathedral from the 1930s that is the tallest educational building in the Western Hemisphere. The interior resembles Hogwarts and there are 30 Nationality Rooms dedicated to different cultures from all over the globe.

2. Primanti Bros. sandwiches. These are the iconic Pittsburgh sandwiches that include French fries and cole slaw. This is to Pittsburgh what the cheesesteak is to Philadelphia.

I enjoyed Tom’s remarks on parks and nature areas, a few that I wasn’t aware of.

chris2x

Thanks Kyle!

Tom Shaner

Kyle, It’s funny that you mentioned My omission of Primanti Brothers. About a half hour after finishing recording the podcast, I realized that I hadn’t mentioned Primanti’s and told my family that I thought I’d be banished from Western PA for my omission! Lol. I had a number of items in my notes that I ommitted, but ran out of time! You caught my two most glaring ones.