We reached Pittsburgh while we were sleeping and awoke to a view of the Duquesne Incline and the river.

Our morning excursion took us to the Andy Warhol Museum; they’d arranged a guided tour for us which was a great advantage over just exploring independently.

There were many interesting images to enjoy, most of which are easy to find on the web. I hadn’t seen Warhol’s “Silver Clouds” before, though.

The current special exhibit is devoted to Warhol and the Velvet Underground and Nico. The cover of the album included a banana sticker over a pink banana; Warhol had taken the banana image from this ashtray, distributed to help convince people that Cavendish bananas were as good as the Gros Michel cultivar that was becoming uneconomical to grow due to Panama Disease.

We decided to walk back to the ship (about a mile) and stopped for lunch at the North Shore Tavern across the street from PNC Park (home of the Pirates). It was good, but the service could have been better and faster.

This afternoon, we went on the “Pittsburgh City Experience”, a guided bus tour of Pittsburgh. Our first stop was St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in the Strip District, one of the six Shrines of Pittsburgh.

After the visit to the church and a short time to wander around the Strip District, we got back on the bus to drive through a few neighborhoods and the campus of the University of Pittsburgh, where we drove around the Cathedral of Learning and the Heinz Chapel.

Our next stop was the Duquesne Incline on Mt. Washington. We’d ridden it on our last trip to Pittsburgh in 2018, so we chose to stay at the top station and enjoy the view instead of riding it again.

We drove back to the ship; as we got off, our guide pointed out the Tribute to Children statue featuring Mr. Rogers near our ship, so we walked over to take a closer look.

As I type this, there’s a big thunderstorm raging outside; my phone keeps vibrating to pass on storm alerts. The latest is a flash flood alert; I guess being on a ship is an advantage when there’s flooding in the area!

There were no port calls scheduled for today; we left Marietta about 10pm last night and are due in at Pittsburgh around 12:30am tomorrow. The scenery along the banks was mostly pretty, though it was very clear that we were in coal country.

I was surprised when the American Heritage pulled alongside the shore at Moundsville, West Virginia soon after breakfast and lowered its gangplank; a couple of the crew got off and started talking with people who seemed to be waiting for us, including a gentleman in a shirt and tie whose name tag read “Rick Healy, City Manager”.

The Captain was up on the top deck using a PA to talk with them; I asked him what was up, and he said that ACL was considering adding Moundsville to its extended Ohio River itinerary and he was there to see what kinds of docking facilities might be necessary for them to add. David Dorsey, our expert speaker, said that Moundsville had a few attractions, including the Fostoria Glass Museum and a very large Indian mound (hence the name).

The parley continued for about an hour, then we pushed off and resumed our trip up the Ohio.

We got another surprise after lunch, when we returned to our room and found that the bathroom floor was quite wet. And then we discovered that the toilet was running. I got the assistant hotel manager to come up but he couldn’t turn it off; by the time they’d gotten an engineer to the room, the water had overflowed and soaked our room’s carpet.

We are now in our third stateroom on this cruise. Each has been on a different deck (the higher you go, the higher the price), but they’ve all been identical in size and furnishings; the higher decks have had a bit less engine noise, though.

We’re going through the last lock of the trip now (there are 19 on the Ohio); Pittsburgh awaits!