Today is effectively the last day of our holiday, although in reality it's all a bit of a write-off as we need to be at the airport by 1.00pm. I took the opportunity for one last photography outing. Unfortunately, on the one occasion I picked a location that would not include the actual sunrise, it was when there was an amazing sunrise, but in completely the opposite direction to the cityscape that I was aiming to photograph. Some photos of the sunrise behind a building site (which was actually already at work) were not really what I was after. The early start at the building site seemed typical. Even when I left at 5.15am, the road into Houston was already heaving. People obviously start work very early here. I took my photos and then drove back ... read more

I got up early for some photography. I was hoping for a location where there is some water reflecting the skyline, however the river in question was almost non-existent. Apparently, there has not been a drop of rain here for months and they are on the verge of a severe drought. Strangely, the news this morning is continuing to report on horrific flooding in Kentucky, which is not that far (by US standards) from here. They also mentioned a huge amount of rain in Death Valley, which I imagine is very unusual. We had wondered why this hotel was quite expensive compared to the others we have stayed in and now we have found out. There is a three day conference taking place for independent beauty consultants, so it is extremely busy. We also heard on ... read more

Today it was sadly time to move on from San Antonio, which has to be our favourite place so far this holiday - sorry Houston and New Orleans. We were heading to Dallas today, but as Austin is on the route so we through we would stop there on the way. Austin is the capital of Texas and is the site of the Texas State Capitol. We found it very easily and were also easily (and surprisingly) able to park on a street right by it. To make things even better, some kind soul had left two hours remaining on the parking meter, which was the perfect amount of time for us. Thank you whoever you are. After a quick visit to the Visitors' Center (well I suppose that's what it's for), we walked across to ... read more

I am clearly still partially on UK time as I was awake early so walked out to The Alamo which was only five minutes away and was illuminated at night. It is surprising what a difference moving 500 miles to the west makes as sunrise was significantly later than it had been in New Orleans. I got talking to the Alamo Ranger who was outside the site even at that time in the morning. It seems that the UK and the USA were actually on the same side in the conflict here. Whilst that is always the case now, the British are usually the bad guys in American history (see ). Apparently there were people from 12 different countries killed here. We are booked on an audio tour tomorrow, so we will find out all about ... read more

One of our missions for today was to try and actually find the French Market (see ), but first we had booked to go for a Mississippi cruise on Natchez Steamboat. The boat was actually called The City of New Orleans, so I'm not sure what has happened there? Also I didn’t see a lot of steam, not that it matters, but our Steamboat Natchez cruise was on the diesel ship City of New Orleans. I'll just call it a paddle-wheel boat as that is at least accurate. Like I say, none of that matters. A warning for anyone who has booked the paddle-wheel boat online, you will need to get your online receipt changed for actual tickets otherwise you will need to queue all over again - not that we would do such a silly ... read more