My (Cheap) Trip to Pittsburgh Day 1

How cheap can you do a trip to Pittsburgh?  Does three nights for under $200.00 sound like a good deal?  Here's how I did it last weekend.  First of all, my daughter lives there, so I was able to stay at her apartment.  That was a big savings right off the bat. Even the cheapest hotels in the Pittsburgh area are about $70.00 per night. I saved at least $210.00 by staying with a relative. I arrived late Friday afternoon via Megabus. There is a non-stop route that runs from near my house to Pittsburgh at least twice a day.  My round trip ticket cost $30.00.  I didn't have the headache of driving into the city, dealing with traffic or the bad weather.  I had three hours to myself to do some reading and studying.  Megabus is always clean and comfortable.  Sometimes it runs late as it did on Friday afternoon, but I wasn't on a schedule, so no big deal.  All I did was text my daughter when we were about there and I had a ride waiting for me when I stepped off the bus.  Let the fun begin!

We were both hungry so we headed to Squirrel Hill, a Pittsburgh neighborhood, to get something to eat. We stumbled onto an antique car show just starting in the street.  We spent some time looking at the cars and browsing in a vintage shop called Avalon.

We headed to Uncle Sam's sub shop. I had a mediterranean sub and Marla had a cheesesteak.  Of course it wouldn't be Pittsburgh unless you had a huge mound of fries on top of your sandwich!

We each ate half of our subs and decided to keep the other half for our lunch the next day.  That gave me incentive to finish all my fries (uh-oh healthy diet blown).  We dropped my luggage at Marla's apartment and met her boyfriend, Tony, for gelato at Mercurio's in Shadyside.  This place has delicious gelato and some tasty oven fired pizza.

The total cost for day 1 in Pittsburgh
Megabus: $15.00
Parking in Squirell Hill: $2.00
Squirell Hill car show and browsing and Avalon $0.00!
Subs at Uncle Sam's $17.44
Gelato at Mercurio's $6.36

Total $40.80

Day one was fun.  Is it possible to have a cheaper day than $42.00?  Check back tomorrow and see...