Dragons in the Burgh

We took the kids down to the South Side to see some dragons.

On the way, we saw a train. Yes, that could have been the adventure in itself, but we continued down the path to the Riverfront park to the Pittsburgh Dragon Boat Festival.
There were plenty of vendors with lots of interesting goods, (it felt, just a smidge, like Chinatown) chinese food and entertainment. By the time we got to where we could see the races, there was an oil barge passing creating a delay in the race starts. It was huge and took quite a while to pass.


The race that we watched, was two boatfulls of breast cancer survivors. One from Philly, the other from Pittsburgh. Amazing and inspirational. I was really impressed by how many boats there were and how far the teams came. It was a lot of fun. Just a suggestion for when you go next year... bring a chair. Not a single solitary place to sit.



We had a nice time and the boys did, too. We parked at South Side Works and walked over. Before we got back into the car we did a smidge of shopping. Ok, so I did a bit of shopping and the Mister and the boys snacked on trail mix at REI. Actually, the Mister did do a bit of dreaming about his bike rack while at REI. He will eventually break down and buy one. Probably when INBA wants to ride a bike on the trails instead of pushing the Thomas train (whose face has broken off and has lost the seat that used to be ridden on, is frankly unrecognizable as Thomas.) The whole point of this blurb is that if you haven't been down to the South Side lately, you should go. You can really see the clean up creeping along, block by block. And, it is still urban chic and not totally yuppie. Not that I have anything against yuppies, but if you've seen one yuppie neighborhood, you have pretty much seen them all. I prefer revitalization that preserves some character amongst the chainstores. And I like the South Side.