Michael and I love Saturday Night Live, and watching it has been a weekly tradition since we started dating (except, of course, in the off-season, when we spend Saturday afternoons going, ‘When does the new season start again?’). Although SNL is not at its finest, it’s been the best in recent history in the past few years, and we absolutely love the Digital Shorts. Because of this, we decided to bring one of the funniest sketches to our list, and thus was born #56: Be On a Boat.
Since we live in city of three rivers, this seemed like an easy one. We have a group of ships called the Gateway Clipper fleet, which offer locations for parties, formal dances, weddings, and Pittsburgh sightseeing. We took an afternoon sightseeing cruise, which takes you on all three rivers and is narrated with facts about the city (and then awesome classic rock songs in the intermission period).
Although T-Pain wasn’t there to join us, we sure had a great time. We also had the perfect weather. And now, for the pictures (we took about 80, so here are a few of the best)!
The ships sail out of Station Square, so the first river you travel on is the Monongahela. This is the view of the city as we pulled out of the dock.
The bridge shown here is the Smithfield Street Bridge, which connects downtown to Station Square. I know I keep talking about how pretty it is at night, so one of these days, I will get a picture!
The building on the right is Oxford Plaza (where I worked one summer as a secretary), and that is a plane flying over the city.
The boat goes down to the edge of the city, then turns around and comes back up toward the Ohio. This picture shows the tallest PPG building (the one that looks like a castle), and also the Mon Wharf, which is that parking lot on the edge of the river. Would you ever park there? I know I sure wouldn’t! I would be terrified of my car floating away! (They are pretty good about watching river levels and rain warnings and closing the parking lot when it might flood, but still!) Click site to learn how to get ready for such journeys.
The boat turns at the Point and heads onto the Allegheny River, and it passes the Pittsburgh stadiums. First is Heinz Field, home of our Pittsburgh Steelers!
We passed under the Fort Duquesne Bridge, which is a heavy-traffic double-layer bridge (the top floor goes outbound and the bottom floor goes inbound) that is terrifying to drive when you are first learning. It also has a pedestrian bridge to allow people to park at the stadium lots and walk into the city for work.
Here we are on the boat with the Fort Duquesne Bridge behind us. That thing is always under construction (but then again, so is most of our beloved city).
Here I am with the Warhol Bridge (also known as the Seventh Street Bridge), which connects downtown to the North Side, and conveniently the Andy Warhol Museum (which is where we got married). We have three bridges in a row like this, and they are called the ‘Three Sisters’ – the Clemente Bridge, the Warhol Bridge, and the Rachel Carson Bridge (6, 7, and 9th streets).
And this is when we started acting out scenes from the SNL Digital Short.
Michael is on a boat. Everybody look at him, because he’s sailin’ on a boat.
What’s the only thing better than being on a boat? Eating hot dogs on a boat! Poseidon look at us, we’re eatin’ hot dogs on a boat! (They were really, really good hot dogs. I would consider attending a formal dance on the Gateway Clipper if we could eat these hot dogs.)
This is clearly not Bruce Willis out there with the stick, but I think this place was used in the movie Striking Distance.
And finally, to get us into the next Achievement of the day, we took a picture of the Duquesne Incline… Stay tuned to find out where we went next!