We've been in Houston for much longer than we originally anticipated because hurricane Isaac ruined our plans to go to New Orleans. It was a good time to escape form Miami as we were so sunburnt due to sitting on the beach in gale force winds.
Houston is a very quiet city and for the first few days we were the only tourists. However there were still quite a few things to see and do. One of these included the 'Shark Train' which, in our minds, we hyped up to be some a,axing adventure. However, when we arrived, it was five dollars worth of being the only people over the age of 25 who weren't accompanied by 6 year old children. We did see sharks though.
We saw the George Bush statue and visited Houston's underground tunnel network which is basically the tube, minus the tube.
Simon's birthday was the first day since arriving that we had rain, and lots of it. However, we had a nice day going to an awesome restaurant called Brasil (complete with stuffed bear installation on the wall) and the Sundance Cinema to see 'Sleepwalk With Me'
We've taken advantage of the museums' free days going to the MFAH, Museum of Contemporary Art, the Rothko Chapel, the Jung Centre and the Holocaust Museum.
We also went to Hermann Park where he statue of Sam Houston is and saw turtles in a Japanese garden.
A real highlight was going to the NASA Space Centre where we saw the Houston Mission Control ( AKA Houston the Eagle has landed) as well as the Saturn Space Shuttle as well as other space paraphernalia.
We have met some interesting people, a few of them have been in our new favourite shop catchingly titled 'Only One Dollar Plus 19 Cents Tax' where one of the proprietors thought we were so foreign that we must be royalty. Another character was the man in Jack in the Box who started every sentence, with a thick Texan accent saying 'I'm just curious but...' and who kindly updated our small fries to a large curly fries 'because they're better'. People have been really kind to us here, maybe that's because there aren't that many tourists as say, New York. Finally we met a toothless man near the museum district wielding a saw and asking us 'where did y'all get bananas from?' when we ignored the question he repeated saying 'I said, where'd y'all get bananas from?!'. He then went on to tells about playing guitar in a trailer park and allegedly smoking weed with Paul McCartney. He also told us about his latest exploit which included staff of the museum calling 911 because he hid his saw in the bushes while he tried to go see the dinosaurs on his lunch hour. He was a nice guy. Later that day, Jade got bitten by an ant.
When we arrived in Houston, we booked into a hotel (our pre-planned accommodation wasn't for another few days - New Orleans and all that). When we transferred from the hotel to the hostel, we booked what we thought was a cab. We were waiting outside our relatively posh hotel while other guests were having their 4x4s returned to them by the valet. When our cab turned up, it was a little door less Eco-cart (think Smart car minus the doors and storage space). We proceeded to jam our luggage into one of the seats and roll uptown at roughly 15 mph and we held our bags tightly on each corner. Our driver was cool though. He told us all about his travels around Europe.
Our last day was Jade's birthday. We celebrated by going to a butterfly centre full of thousands of tropical butterflies. One tried to eat Jade's leg and Simon was delighted when he spotted Mos Def with his kids. Jade didn't know who he was but thought he looked like someone she worked with when she was 17. Simon spoke to him anyway.
Next stop, Austin!
