Squirrel Hill

I took myself to the Squirrel Hill district of Pittsburgh today. It’s a lovely, leafy neighbourhood, high on a hill, where a lot of the Jewish Pittsburghese live. It instantly reminded me of the Haight district in San Francisco. It’s not got the hippy dippy vibe, but the buildings look quite similar and there’s something about the way the local park tumbles into the Main Street which reminded me of Golden Gate Park. It’s much much greener, however. Pittsburgh smells of English summers: freshly mown grass and flowers. It’s full of birds. Cardinals are particularly pretty with their bright red and black feathers, and American robins, which my friend Matt described as “British robins on steroids” are, well, just as Matt describes!

I went to a Judaica shop to buy myself a kippah. When you sing every week in a synagogue, you can never have too many kippot. They keep blowing off my head on the tube! I’d had a shop recommended to me which sold tweedy-looking specimens, so I bought one and had a lovely chat to the lady who owned the place.

I sat down in a fabulous diner called Pamela’s and had an over-sized omelette. It was whilst I ate that I realised the kippah I’d bought was a bit of an optical illusion which made my eyes feel very funny. Fortunately, I will never see it whilst I’m wearing it!

I walked with great trepidation to the Tree of Life Synagogue, which is where eleven people were murdered in October last year in a brutal anti-Semitic attack. It felt important to pay my respects, and I stood, for some time, in the beautiful sunshine, staring at the building whilst trying to comprehend what had happened there. People have showered the place with love. There were little crocheted Stars of David hanging from the fences, coupled with messages of: “I hope you know how loved you are”, “love is always the best choice”, “always hope, always love.”

I walked home to the hotel through the charming Schenley Park, which is something of a leafy wilderness in the heart of this quirky city. A network of large roads pass through the park, many on large iron bridges. And just as in Hampstead Heath’s Vale Of Health, a small community exists within the park. Much of it sits underneath these curious road bridges, so they’re surrounded by green forests, yet, over head, the traffic roars louder than it does over the West Way. It’s a curious contradiction.

I managed to get myself utterly lost at one point, using Sat Nav to get to roads which should have taken me home, only to realise that the roads were in culverts or didn’t have footpaths. Americans don’t seem to like to walk unless it’s part of an organised trek. I ended up in a lorry park, hugely grateful to the trucker who helped me to find the cycle path! It didn’t really bother me. I had nowhere to be. I was simply enjoying the weirdness of it all.

I took myself to Point State Park in the afternoon. This is the spot at which the Allegheny River meets the Monongahela River and becomes the surging Ohio River which actually flows out into the Gulf of Mexico. It’s not the most exciting park in the world. There’s a rather impressive fountain, but nothing there spoke to me like so much else in the city.

I walked back to the hotel along the north side of the river. It was a considerably less lovely option than my charming river walk the day before. I found myself on a grotty cycle path, following the route of a deafening dual carriageway. I must have walked about fifteen miles today. My feet feel like stumps

I’ll leave the saga of this evening to a separate blog because, for now, I must sleep, and I have a plane journey tomorrow which I probably need distraction from! Watch this space...