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transit and birds in Pittsburgh
I said I was going to write about these subjects, but my post on food got a little too long.
Both the wedding venue, just across the Monongahela River on one side of downtown, and the baseball stadium, just across the Allegheny on the other side, were a little further from my hotel than I was comfortable walking, so I was going to need to learn the bus system. I found the online guide to transit in Pittsburgh confusing and useless, and while Google Maps will tell you how to do if you need to leave right now, it's too narrowly focused to be useful for planning ahead.
I walked over to the nearest station of the light rail, which is called the T (which stands for trolley, which you'll understand if you take it out to the suburbs, where it runs down the middle of streets). It was an underground station like on BART, except no gates, because the T is free in the central city. There were, however, ticket machines for buying passes, good on both the buses and the pay parts of the T - 3-hour, 1-day, 7-day, starting from whenever you first use them, not when you buy them. All this was explained to me by helpful locals whom I enquired from.
Down in the bowels of the station was a large multiple-compartment tray with folding paper schedules for every bus line in the city. Not having time to figure out which lines I might need, I took one copy of each. They were very useful. For all of my travel plans, I'd look up the route on Google Maps, write down the numbers of all the bus lines that served it, then look up on the paper schedules where they actually went and when. This was particularly useful when I went out to my brother's house in the suburbs. I took a taxi out there (I don't do Uber), but I came back on the bus, having carefully printed out a map that would show me how to walk the 1/4 mile downhill (which is why I didn't take the bus in) to the bus stop and what time it would arrive, which was vital given that the line runs only every 90 minutes on holidays. I was relieved to find I was not the only rider on the bus.
I plotted an even more elaborate trip to the North Shore for the ball game. First I took a bus to a likely lunch place, then I walked a few blocks through a park to the National Aviary, then a longer distance distinctly downhill to the ball park. (No bus service on that route that wouldn't be more trouble than it was worth; figuring things like that out is what made the planning elaborate.) Plenty of time; the game wasn't until 4 pm. Having realized our seats were on the back side of the stadium close to the otherwise awkwardly-located local T station, I took that back downtown afterwards.
But the National Aviary, ah that was worth seeing. I enjoy aviaries, especially the walk-through kind. The San Antonio Zoo has four of them and is the best such experience I've had, but this was a close second. It's small, but is packed with birds and is all-bird. There's three walk-throughs: a grasslands one with tiny birds, mostly canaries and finches; a wetlands, which B. would have enjoyed the most, full of flamingos and odd ducks (I saw one duck, which the posted guide identified as a puna teal, chasing a flamingo around the pond); and a tropical rainforest, which featured gigantic blue parrots which missed a bet by not being the mascots of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and a large Malaysian pheasant (the Great Argus, the guidebook said) which kept throwing back its head and emitting a piercingly loud woo woo cry that echoed through the room.
There were also smaller displays featuring African penguins (tolerant of a temperate climate), lorikeets, and a giant Steller's sea eagle. And much more. There's a tiny cafeteria that includes among its offerings chicken tenders and turkey sandwiches. Roasted bird, in an aviary? I had to wonder about that.
Both the wedding venue, just across the Monongahela River on one side of downtown, and the baseball stadium, just across the Allegheny on the other side, were a little further from my hotel than I was comfortable walking, so I was going to need to learn the bus system. I found the online guide to transit in Pittsburgh confusing and useless, and while Google Maps will tell you how to do if you need to leave right now, it's too narrowly focused to be useful for planning ahead.
I walked over to the nearest station of the light rail, which is called the T (which stands for trolley, which you'll understand if you take it out to the suburbs, where it runs down the middle of streets). It was an underground station like on BART, except no gates, because the T is free in the central city. There were, however, ticket machines for buying passes, good on both the buses and the pay parts of the T - 3-hour, 1-day, 7-day, starting from whenever you first use them, not when you buy them. All this was explained to me by helpful locals whom I enquired from.
Down in the bowels of the station was a large multiple-compartment tray with folding paper schedules for every bus line in the city. Not having time to figure out which lines I might need, I took one copy of each. They were very useful. For all of my travel plans, I'd look up the route on Google Maps, write down the numbers of all the bus lines that served it, then look up on the paper schedules where they actually went and when. This was particularly useful when I went out to my brother's house in the suburbs. I took a taxi out there (I don't do Uber), but I came back on the bus, having carefully printed out a map that would show me how to walk the 1/4 mile downhill (which is why I didn't take the bus in) to the bus stop and what time it would arrive, which was vital given that the line runs only every 90 minutes on holidays. I was relieved to find I was not the only rider on the bus.
I plotted an even more elaborate trip to the North Shore for the ball game. First I took a bus to a likely lunch place, then I walked a few blocks through a park to the National Aviary, then a longer distance distinctly downhill to the ball park. (No bus service on that route that wouldn't be more trouble than it was worth; figuring things like that out is what made the planning elaborate.) Plenty of time; the game wasn't until 4 pm. Having realized our seats were on the back side of the stadium close to the otherwise awkwardly-located local T station, I took that back downtown afterwards.
But the National Aviary, ah that was worth seeing. I enjoy aviaries, especially the walk-through kind. The San Antonio Zoo has four of them and is the best such experience I've had, but this was a close second. It's small, but is packed with birds and is all-bird. There's three walk-throughs: a grasslands one with tiny birds, mostly canaries and finches; a wetlands, which B. would have enjoyed the most, full of flamingos and odd ducks (I saw one duck, which the posted guide identified as a puna teal, chasing a flamingo around the pond); and a tropical rainforest, which featured gigantic blue parrots which missed a bet by not being the mascots of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and a large Malaysian pheasant (the Great Argus, the guidebook said) which kept throwing back its head and emitting a piercingly loud woo woo cry that echoed through the room.
There were also smaller displays featuring African penguins (tolerant of a temperate climate), lorikeets, and a giant Steller's sea eagle. And much more. There's a tiny cafeteria that includes among its offerings chicken tenders and turkey sandwiches. Roasted bird, in an aviary? I had to wonder about that.