Privately owned by Lord and Lady Palumbo of England, Kentuck Knob was a much simpler, yet more inhabitable house (which was good considering it was actually inhabited!). One of my favorite features of the house was the sculpture garden/ walk including a large Claes Oldenburg apple core, a chunk of the Berlin Wall, and a army of red "people", like a paper doll chess set. The walk ended in a meadow, looking out to the mountains. After a final stroll, we drove back to Pittsburgh to return the car. Part of me wanted to go to the Frick Art & Historical Center while we still had the car, but it was unrealistic with only an hour to go. We dropped the car off and they in turn drove us back to the inn.
After a bit of relaxation, we took the bus downtown and then the subway to Station Square. To get to the restaurants up the hill on Grandview Avenue, we had to take an incline railroad, or a little mini train up the hill. There, we met the meanest man we've ever met. Ever. He was almost a caricature of a mean man. We didn't understand how to buy tickets and he just let into us. We eventually figured out we have to buy a dollar token (which we had to immediately give back to board the train), and we high-tailed it out of there. He was funny and scary at the same time.
Finally away from the mean man on top of Grandview, we walked down the street and looked at restaurants. The street ran along Mount Washington. Many of the restaurants had gorgeous views of the three rivers (Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio) surrounding Pittsburgh. At a few of the lookout points, there were groups of kids getting their prom photos taken. We decided to eat at the Grandview Saloon, where we were able to eat outside and watch the sun set over the rivers. And, in Primanti Brothers-style, they put french fries in my salad! Adam had a good steak and cheese, even though we were quite far from Philadelphia. We took the incline railroad back down and there were more restaurants along the river. There was a lot of construction and it was now dark out so we felt a little lost, but eventually we arrived at an entertainment complex, Station Square, complete with leaping fountains. We ended up at Joe's Crab Shack, a cheesy theme restaurant with toys on the ceiling and souvenir cups full of frozen day-glo drinks. We got back on the subway, back to downtown (it wasn't very fun waiting for the bus at such a late hour), and were very relieved when we were back at the inn. We had to check out by 6 a.m. the next morning in order to be on our train, but the inn keeper sent us off with coffee and a bag of pastry.
On the train, we just watched the cows the whole way to New York City. It was a mad dash to change to the Boston train in New York, but we made it and were back in Boston by 10 p.m. We were very very tired.
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