Day 16 - Dallas | Travel Blog

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July 31st 2009

Published: August 1st 2009

Dallas - 35°c (55% humidity)

After last night’s fairly late end, I still managed to wake up fairly refreshed around 9am. After checking my email and surfing the web for a while from the comfort of my big hotel bed, I got up showered, dressed and headed out at 10am. Scott wanted a lie in this morning so I didn’t bother waking him up, leaving him a note instead telling him where I was headed off to and to text if he was around. Not that he’d have heard me anyway, when he’s wearing his earplugs and eye mask he usually needs an atomic bomb to go off before he’ll stir!

A large portion of the group had gotten up for the 9:15am half-day trip to Fort Worth with Kristina, however myself and the other half of the group stayed behind and did our own thing in downtown Dallas. Last night I’d gathered a load of things together from out of my case, like the souvenirs I’d been buying and some of the clothes I’d brought over with me that have now been replaced with brand new ones from the Abercrombie and Fitch stores I keep visiting, and packed it all into two large bags and walked down to the post office just around the block. Thankfully Aaron, my friend in Delaware who I’ll be meeting up with for a few days once I arrive in New York, has once again said I can mail him some things in a box that he’ll then bring up to New York with him ready for me to put in a second case once I arrive since only one suitcase is allowed on the bus.

After getting rid of my things in a big box courtesy of the post office, I headed several blocks over to Fountain place, which was truly beautiful. The area kind of reminded me of Canary Wharf in London, or the financial district of New York. Tall buildings everywhere with an almost sterile feel. - Polished marble, spotless pavements and immaculately cut trees and bushes. I’ve never seen so many fountains in my life. Being a Friday, there still really didn’t seem that many people around. The roads and pavements were deserted of people. Perhaps the workers were all at work, the school kids still at home, and the tourists were still in bed. (I know a fair majority of the Contiki ‘tourists’ were!)

Aside from when I walked to the post office back in Anaheim, it was the first time I’ve been alone the whole trip, and it was quite a surreal but liberating feeling to be wandering around a different city on my own. With the deserted streets and the Dallas sunshine blazing down, it felt like such a good morning.

At Fountain place the area was stunning, with hundreds of fountains coming up through holes in the pavements in unison with one another, and then other areas of fountains cascading down in step formation. I’m not entirely sure I’ve seen quite so many fountains in one area before, unless you were to count the fountains at Bellagio of course, but certainly never within a walk-around plaza.

From Fountain plaza, I walked a few more blocks and picked up the DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transport) tram and for $1.50 headed to Reunion tower, the tallest point in downtown Dallas, where I was hoping to go to the top to get “great 360° of Dallas” as per Kristina’s instructions on arrival into Dallas yesterday. However once I got there, large signs saying ‘tower closed today’ greeted me, which more than a little frustrated me. I managed to get some good shots of the tower from the ground though, and from certain spots, what the view might have looked like back across Dallas from the top, albeit from a different angle and perspective.

I caught the tram back to St Paul station, where I had a wander up and down Main Street at the shops and grabbed some ‘brunch’ before heading back to the hotel around 12:30pm. Scott was chilling out on his bed getting to grips with his new laptop he bought the other day from Wal-Mart and enjoying using the Internet. I made mention of the fact that it was nice that the ever forming queue to use my laptop would now be one less and might hopefully get shared between us now!

Scott and I headed out around 1pm and caught the tram down to the ‘Sixth Floor Museum’ at Dealey Plaza, where the coach with those that had gone to Fort Worth was just arriving. We had Contiki-paid admittance into the museum, and so all bundled inside with our tickets.

The ‘Sixth Floor Museum’ being located on the sixth floor of the old ‘Texas School-book Depository’, famous for where the sniper that ‘supposedly’ shot JFK was located. I say ‘supposedly’ since the whole consensus around Dallas is one of whether or not the guy that was charged - Lee Harvey Oswald (who was subsequently killed by someone before being sentenced whilst he was being moved from one location to another) was actually the guy that did it. Conspiracy theories are abounding in Dallas, with people going to great lengths to tell their tales and stories about what ‘really’ happened to JFK.
The museum however, took the somewhat ‘official’ approach, going into great detail about JFK’s life before his presidency, his family, wife and children, his life while president, his trip to Dallas and subsequent assassin, and the actions of Lee Harvey Oswald before, during and after the shots.

The somewhat cynical side of me thought the whole thing was a bit over the top and a bit too much in-depth, but then I guess the assassination of a president is a big thing and not to be joked over, so I’ll hold fire on that one. (Ahem!)
In a morbid kind of way, it was still fairly interesting to find out what was the ‘official’ take on the events and see from where the guy would have been standing in order to shoot JFK, and the view over the streets below, imagining where the motorcade would have been in it’s procession.

After our headphone audio tour around the ‘museum’ finished, we headed downstairs and back outside over to the road where JFK was shot, with a ‘helpful’ big white X in the middle of the street for those with any confusion as to where the exact spot actually was. Around the area was the JFK memorial, which as memorial structures go, was somewhat boring. - It’s kind of hard to explain exactly what it looked like, but I would sum it up as just a massive white stone box-like structure that looked like a multi-storey car park. One of those things best ‘Google image’ searched for in order to gain a better idea on what I’m trying to describe.

After we’d all taken enough photos of the area, Michelle, Lauren, Joey, Danni and I headed for the nearest tram station to the trip back to the hotel. Back at the hotel Scott was already back along with (Brit) James who was making use of Scott’s new laptop in conjunction with the hotel’s free wi-fi connection to sort out his hotels for his South American trip once the Contiki trip is over.

Scott and I headed down for the bus just before 6pm for our group trip over to the Mesquite rodeo and indoor BBQ. The BBQ was fairly good, although I was kind of hoping there would be burgers and wings rather than just sliced steak and sausage. The rodeo got started around 7:30pm with indoor fireworks and a display of American patriotism by girls on horseback riding around the area waving giant-sized flags.
For the next two hours we watched cowboys and cowgirls, and mini-sized cowboys and girls in training in the form of children who at the age of just 9 were already into rounding up and riding these animals. Some of the displays were good fun and impressive, whilst others were just downright brutal and on many occasion I had to turn my head and ignore the noises some of the calves were making as they were wrestled to the ground after being lassoed by guys on horseback. Admittedly I signed up for the optional rodeo excursion not quite knowing what to expect, and I don’t suppose I thought about what might actually go on there, had I have done, I’m not entirely sure I’d have gone. Although I’m no animal rights protestor, even I was slightly disheartened by the way some of the animals were treated for our ‘entertainment’.

After the rodeo had finished around 9:30pm, we headed out of the arena and back to the coach. However upon reaching the exit doors, we were greeted by the biggest thunder and lightning storm I think I have ever seen in my entire life! There was literally thunder and lightning bolts every 20 seconds and was right overhead. The rain was torrential, and on the short run from the door to the coach, even with the aid of a very helpful cowboy who held an umbrella up for us as we ran out in pairs, I still got soaked.

Back on the coach, some of the group made plans to head out to Kristina’s suggested bar that the coach was heading to after the hotel drop-off for the others that didn’t fancy it. Since I was so soaked and wasn’t really in the mood for it, I headed back to the hotel room with Marnee, Joey and Danni. After I somewhat reluctantly agreed to walk with Danni around the block to the cash machine (she didn’t feel too safe on her own, so I did the gentlemanly thing and accompanied her), we got back to my room where we had some drinks, watched ‘Will and Grace’ and ate up a load of the random snacks like Oreos, Pringles and Hershey Kisses that I’ve been buying, opening and half-eating over the past few days from all the different Wal-Marts we keep visiting!

Around 1:30am we called it a night and the girls headed back to their respective rooms, leaving me to clear up the mess and pack my case ready for tomorrow morning’s departure for Memphis.

Day 16 - Dallas

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