Adventures in the USA: Houston, Texas

I flew to Houston this morning en route to Central America, where I will be spending a week in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

When I landed at IAH this afternoon, I picked up a rental car and headed straight to Jesse H. Jones Park, only a few minutes northeast of the airport.

It was a lovely, mostly sunny afternoon, and I had the trails in the park mostly to myself.

It was a neat spot, because there is a cypress swamp, and the cypress's have "knees" that stick up out of the water.

I have never seen anything quite like it before.  There were turtles in the swamp, and a magnificent male cardinal;

but, unfortunately, I did not spot any alligators, which was what I was especially keen to see.

After an hour walking through the park I checked in at my hotel close to the airport and then drove to downtown Houston.  I stopped at Minute Maid Park to take some pictures and look inside.

Then I drove through downtown to the Buffalo Bayou Park.  Buffalo Bayou is basically Houston's "river," and they have a nice park system along the bayou with pedestrian/cyclist trails and bridges.  Again I was hoping to see alligators, but I had to be content with some unique ducks and herons.  And also, bats, which actually I did not see, but I could hear them and see their roosts.

Interestingly, there is apparently a large colony of bats underneath this particular bridge.

It was now after 17:00, and I decided to go for dinner.  I had a couple of potential spots picked out, and decided since I had not been able to see an alligator, I would try to eat some.  I went to a place called Beaver's, pretty close to the park.

I ordered "fried alligator, crawfish, and grits."

The green things are pickled okra.  The dish was possibly even more delicious than it was interesting for me.

Tomorrow I am off to Guatemala City and here is my travel plan:

Adventures in the USA: Dallas, Texas

Dallas is certainly not in the Caribbean, but it was where we were laid over for eight hours en route to Miami.  Our flight from Edmonton landed around noon, so basically an afternoon in Dallas was a bonus, courtesy of American Airlines.  

Neither Andrea nor I had ever been to Texas before, so we made the most of it, starting with a 45 minutes, $5 round trip ride into Dallas on the DART rail.

Once in the city we got some Texas BBQ right by the DART station, at Sonny Bryan's Smokehouse.

Then we began a walking tour roughly based on a National Geographic walking tour map I found online.  We saw the grassy knoll and Dealey Plaza where JFK was shot;

the Old Red Courthouse;

John Neely Bryan's cabin;

the JFK memorial (surprisingly unimpressive);

Reuinion Tower;

Pioneer Plaza;

Pioneer cemetery;

City Hall;

Hotel Adolphus;

and Thanksgiving Square, which has obviously seen better days.

We stopped for coffee in the Magnolia Building, the first skyscraper west of the Mississippi, or something like that.

And we also ran into the remarkable complex of First Baptist Church, which integrated three generations of church buildings in a very attractive way.  This was not an attraction on our walking map, but it was maybe the most interesting place we visited nonetheless.

The day after Christmas was probably not the best day to tour Dallas's downtown, because most things were closed and quiet, but we had nearly perfect walking weather, and anyway, it sure beat sitting at DFW airport all day.

You can see all of my Dallas photos here.