As I posted earlier, Rob and I made it back from our whirlwind trip to Pittsburgh. In the span of 19 hours we made it from South Western Ontario to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and back. We expended 2 1/2 tanks of gas and traveled over 1000kms. On the way down we stopped in Erie, PA and found this wonderful store where you can sample Jelly Bellys along with Pepperspray, stunguns, knives and swords [MOV video]. We stopped in Grove City at the Outlet Mall and bought numerous pairs of shoes. We left at 9am and arrived in Pittsburgh at roughly 3pm. Since we arrived early we had a chance to poke around the city a little bit.

We walked down to the river and checked out the new PNC Park, home of the Pirates. In wandering around I found that Pittsburgh is really hodgepodge of styles and architecture. On one corner you’d have old gothic buildings, then across the street would be some art deco inspired design. You just had no idea what to expect.

While wandering through the streets I noticed that there were so many people standing around and waiting for stuff. There would be scads of people waiting for buses on nearly every street corner. There wasn’t much hustle and bustle, just waiting. It was really weird.

In our wanderings we blundered upon a location of Primanti Brothers, where we grabbed a late lunch. This was supposed to be one of the local delicacies in Pittsburgh. Rob ordered one of their sandwiches, which came with pretty much any meat of your choosing, tomato, cheese, coleslaw and french fries served on a bun. I wasn’t feeling as brave, so I opted for the chicken fingers and fries, which was actually pretty good.

We then made our way to the oldest arena in the NHL, Pittsburgh’s Mellon Arena. After attending a game there I can definitely see why Mario has been so anxious to get a new arena built. The place has been in use since the Penguins came into the league in the 1960′s and definitely seems a little worse for wear, though with that said it did have it’s charms in this day and age of generic multipurpose facilities. We had seats up in one of the corporate boxes and things up there were definitely closed quarters up there. All the hallways were pretty narrow and cramped, though the boxes themselves were pretty decent. The closed quarters had its advantages though, as Rob saw Senators General Manager John Muckler near the bathroom, then as we were leaving the game we walked right by Mario Lemieux as he was waiting for the elevator.

Before the game the fans in Pittsburgh booed the Canadian anthem, which I thought was pretty class-less, though it was really just the actions of a few that made everyone else in the arena look bad. As I knew they had done this last game I made it a point to sing the Oh Canada at the top of my lungs, and as many of you know, I can be rather loud. The game itself was pretty intense. That building was loud. Ottawa was outplayed by Pittsburgh for the first game in this series, yet they came away with the win. Guess that evens out for the Pens stealing game 2 after being totally outplayed. I was definitely sweating it coming down to the wire given Ottawa’s recent history with holding late leads this season. It was just the kind of win they needed to build confidence, as they haven’t been able to lock down those 1 goal games very well recently. Here’s hoping yesterdays game is the last one in Pittsburgh this year.