We sadly left Toronto on Friday, May 20 and drove to Niagara Falls.
We've never been to Niagara Falls but we had to get back into the U.S. somehow, and it was on the way. We didn't know much about it, other than being kind of tacky and touristy (which it is), but we enjoyed the day. We started on the Canadian side of the Falls and went to Queen Victoria park. If you don't know, there are two primary waterfalls at Niagara - Horseshoe Falls and the American falls. The QV park is the best way to see Horseshoe Falls from land (the picture of Melinda to the right is the top of Horseshoe Falls).
The picture to the left is the Maid of the Mist boat heading up into the spray from Horseshoe Falls. The Maid of the Mist leaves from the U.S. side, but there are similar boats that leave from the Canadian side. If we'd understood things better, we would have done all of our Falls activity from the Canadian side.
To get to the U.S. side of the Niagara River, we crossed the Rainbow bridge (behind Todd in the picture below).
We took the Maid of the Mist boat trip, and it was fun, but if you go, be prepared to get wet - the provided ponchos don't help much. After drying out and having dinner at a large Indian casino across the street from our hotel, we headed back to see the Falls after dark with the Falls illuminated by different colored lights.
We got to Pittsburgh on Saturday, May 20 after the rain finally stopped. Melinda got us a hotel room right across the street from PNC Park, and we walked across the Allegany River on the Andy Warhol bridge (I'm not making this up) into downtown Pittsburgh. We walked down to the point where the Allegany and Monongahela Rivers meet to from the Ohio River.
Our game was on Sunday afternoon (May 21) and we had a beautiful day for the game. The picture on the left is of the statue for Roberto Clemente near the bridge that bears his name. PNC park is a beautiful stadium with a fantastic view of downtown Pittsburgh across the Allegany River (see below). This is only the 11th park of 30 that we're going to visit, but right now it's #1 in terms of ballpark design and layout.
I wish I could say we saw a great game at PNC, but it was a stinker - particularly on the part of the Pirates. They lost 8-3 to the Diamondbacks. The Bucs had three errors, and their pitching staff had five wild pitches, a hit batter, and five walks. There were many families and kids at the game (21,000 attendance) and the little leaguers must have rubbed off on the Pirates pitching staff. But it was 72 degrees, the sun was shining and we had a great time.
We capped off the day by having dinner with my old college friend Bobby Normann and his wife Kim. Bobby and I were on the same hall in our first year at UVa (1975 - yikes!). We figured out that we hadn't seen each other since 1987. Bobby is a New Orleans native, but has lived in Pittsburgh since 1990. I reached out to him when we figured out a date for the Pirates game, and we had a great dinner catching up on our families and reminiscing (and boring our wives).
Next stop - Cincinnati.
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