The Big D

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Some of you might be saying “What about Houston?” I am omitting that city due to a complete lack of anything interesting. We visited their number one tourist attraction which is a shopping mall that is the 4th biggest in the USA. The last night we were there Emma had to leave for her next destination, AFTRS in Sydney, so now all you hear about is Ian and Nick’s antics. Emma, you’re calming voice of reason will be sorely missed.

We rolled into Dallas, or The Big D as the locals call it, and headed straight downtown via the trusty (but not so frequent) train service. It was Australia Day eve so a few drinks were in order. We headed uptown via the trolley to a pub doing a happy hour $2 beer special. Excellent. Happy hour lasted at least 3 or 4 times longer than the advertised time and we eventually found our way back to the hostel. Upon arriving at the hostel we struck up a conversation with 3 other travellers, and surprise surprise, they were all English. There were 2 guys from Portsmouth and a girl from Manchester who supported Liverpool. Needless to say we tried to zone her jibberish out of the conversation, but no such luck.

It’s Australia Day!! We started today by going into Dallas and having a look at the infamous spot where John F. Kennedy was assassinated which is located on Elm St near Houston St. An X marks the spot on the road where the fatal bullet fired from the Book Depository hit JFK. Near the X is the grassy knoll which is where the conspiracy theorists believe a second gunman was shooting at the presidential motor cade. We went up to the sixth floor of the book depository (the floor where Lee Harvey Oswald was perched) and visited the Sixth Floor Museum which is all about JFK and the theories surrounding his death. The museum was very informative with lots of videos, photographs, audio recordings and memorabilia about JFK and his short presidential term. There were also first hand accounts from people who went out to see the president when he was shot. One photograph even showed Lee Harvey Oswald 6/10 of a second after Jack Ruby had pulled the trigger with the grimace on Oswald’s face as the bullet ripped through him. After the museum we visited the JFK memorial followed by a walk around downtown Dallas. On our walk we found the Chase Tower which has a free sky lobby so you can look out over Dallas. After getting the view of Dallas we went back to the hostel, and being Australia Day, started drinking. The poms joined us and at about 4am the next morning we finished. None of us can remember what happened or how much we drank and we all had massive hangovers the next day. It was a great night!!!

Upon waking up at midday with some chronic hangovers we decided to go out to Fort Worth which is the neighboring city about 30mins from Dallas. Our aim was to see a rodeo but that was sold out so we went to the Stockyards which is the part of town themed like the old wild west. Its pretty cool with old saloons and cowboys riding horses and the Stockyards Stock Exchange (cows not shares). Ian purchased himself the cheapest cowboy hat he could find and looked like some sort of mixed up aussie cowboy tourist. After the stockyards we headed back to the hostel for a relatively early night. This didn’t happen as the poms came back from a basketball game after Lisa (the mixed up Mancunian) had been arrested and kicked out for drunken disorderly. Well, more just the drunken but still kicked out and given a lift back. We joined the English folk again and stayed up drinking until about 3am when we decided that, with 12 hours of driving ahead, some sleep would probably be a good idea. Our next destination, the sin city of Las Vegas.

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Comments

[Emma]

Your Head is too small
Hey Ian Your head is way too small for that hat, but you look really cute anyway. Love Emma