St. Patrick’s Day has always been an important holiday to my husband and me. We’re both Irish, but that has less to do with it than the fact that we love a long, drawn-out bar crawl that lasts twelve hours.
Well, maybe it’s more like we *think* we love that until halfway through the journey.
We had spent our previous two East Coast St. Patrick’s Days in my other hometown of Boston, where the bar crawl went on all day and ended with greasy food at my favorite restaurant in Cambridge and a side of Dunkin’ Donuts. But this year, in the essence of finances and timing, we decided to test out the Pittsburgh St. Paddy’s scene.
If you want to hear about a day that went wrong from the start, this is that day. First of all, we wanted to hit up the famous Pittsburgh parade, which is supposed to be quite a scene. But it rained. So, we opted for the second-best thing, which was kegs and eggs at Harris Grille in Shadyside. But they decided they weren’t opening until 10am.
So finally, we slopped through the rainy streets of Greenfield on a lengthy route to the South Side, where we had our first Carrie Bradshaw moment on Second Avenue as a truck sped past and splashed water all over us. (Not that it mattered by that point, because we were so soaken wet from the rain anyway!)
We arrived at Piper’s Pub shortly after 8am, where the bartender informed me that I was getting the earliest cosmopolitan he’d ever made. That brought a smile to my face, and we settled in with some fish and chips (yes, at 9am) and watched some soccer and proudly wore our green. We were on our way home in a cab before noon. 🙂
We started the day out with samosas to give us energy for the long walk to the South Side. They had arrived as an accidental duplicate set in our Indian takeout the previous night, and we knew only an occasion like St. Patrick’s Day would be worthy of their absolute goodness.
The gloomy view of the city from the Hot Metal Bridge (which is also part of another achievement, so expect this picture to pop back up again).
An excellent start to any day – coffee and a cosmopolitan. Piper’s Pub in the South Side was truly accomodating to those of us who chose to celebrate early!
Looking my Irish finest while waiting for the arrival of my fish and chips.