One of the enormous perks of being a housewife is that I have no commitments. Which means that when Joep has a work trip to go on, I am in the luxurious position of being able to join him! And as luck would have it, just last week Joep was needed in Dallas, Texas for work! He very kindly purchased a flight for me and on Saturday morning, after a wonderfully entertaining chili cook off competition on Friday night, we headed to LAX to fly together!
Let me side bar for a second here – Sam & Cara kindly invited us to their place for a chili cook off. I didn’t know what this entailed and have never made chili in my life. Joep made the executive decision that I should make a meat pie & an apple pie and cleared it with Cara in advance. She is one of the nicest people on earth and said that would be perfect. Turned out that a chili cook off is a serious event. People arrived by the dozen carrying large pots of chili. The pots were then lined up and a number assigned to each one. We all then tasted each chili and voted on our favourite. Excitement ensued when there was a TIE between 2 chili’s and a taste off was required! Jen’s chili was voted #1 and we were all very excited. We were also very full. I got a bit carried away with the tasting and really over ate. It was worth it. It also makes me want to make some chili now!
OK back to the point of this blog – Texas.
We arrived in Dallas on Saturday afternoon and, after checking into the hotel, spent the afternoon lounging by the pool in the glorious weather. I must admit, I am not sad to be missing the beginning of Canadian winter. I like sunshine. We then decided that the only possible food option for dinner was … a steak house! Naturally! So off we headed to Hoffbrau Steaks for a feast. On that note, did everyone else already know about the enormous German influence in Texas? I didn’t but it is not hard to spot when you get there and come across towns called Gruene and Fredericksburg. Plus the fact that we were eating at the Hoffbrau said a lot! The dinner was nothing if not plentiful … everything really is bigger in Texas and Joep & I barely made a dent on our meals. Nothing like portion control! Joep’s rack of ribs looked like a few animals died for it and my steak was as big as my head. Both were DELICIOUS! After dinner we headed to a roof top bar for some live country music and cocktails before staggering home in the early hours of the morning.
We marginally regretted the big night the following morning when we were up at the crack of dawn to achieve the days goal – Drive to Austin! Austin is apparently the best part of Texas so we were committed to seeing it. It was well worth it! The drive there was uneventful and we arrived in Austin in time to enjoy a delicious HEALTHY breakfast. Much needed after the previous nights eat-a-thon. We then spent a few hours wandering through the city and soaking up the atmosphere. It’s a really pretty city and has a good bit more to offer than Dallas for sure. Plus it is the State capital and the State Capitol building is a sight to behold! It is bigger than the USA Capitol building. See? Everything really IS bigger in Texas!
Alas we didn’t have too much time to spend in Austin because Joep had work to do so we were on the road back to Dallas in no time. Joep’s lead foot got us into a little trouble with the law on the way home but thankfully the Texas police are not the worst in the world and, whilst it always sucks to get pulled over, it is made marginally nicer when the policeman is polite and friendly. Despite that minor hiccup we made it back to hotel with plenty of time to spare for a pre dinner nap.
Let me take a second here to point out that every evening in Dallas we were mesmerized by the amazing sunsets – I have never seen sunsets like them. The colours were out of this world! So good that we even took a few pics from our hotel room window. Judge all you want. It was incredible.
The rest of the week Joep was super busy with work so I was left up to my own devices. This meant I had the joys of sleeping in every day and enjoying the pool but I’m not just a boring lady of leisure! There were things in the city I wanted to enjoy as well!
Not the least of which was the 6th Floor Museum. For those of you who don’t know this (although I’m pretty sure everyone does), Dallas is famous for being the place that JFK was shot. Kind of a sucky thing to be famous for. The 6th Floor Museum is a museum dedicated to the assassination of JFK and it is situated on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Yes, this is the building that Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot the president from. In fact, the corner of the museum is blocked off and shows the exact spot Oswald allegedly sat with the boxes as they were on that day. Eerie doesn’t even come close to describing it.
Now Joep & I are not huge museum folks and generally we don’t stay too long in museums so it says a huge amount about this museum that I was in there for 3 hours! This is a true story. I had thought the museum would be all gore and focused entirely on the gun shot wounds inflicted to the president. I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that there is so much more to it than that!
The museum discusses in detail the policies that JFK was trying to bring in during his 1,000 days as president. It was incredible to me to see the similarities between his policies and those of Obama’s. It was also interesting to see that they both face similar issues with policies being blocked in the Senate. There was also a lot of discussion around the conspiracy theories regarding JFK’s death and whether Lee Harvey Oswald really was to blame or had in fact carried out the assassination alone. I was riveted. I read every piece of information and watched every single video. Seriously, if you are ever in Dallas you MUST go to this museum.
After soaking up every ounce of information I could in the museum I took a stroll around the neighbourhood, through the grassy knoll and then up to the JFK Memorial which is pretty sterile and doesn’t have much life about it. But it is huge! So everything really is bigger in Texas.
This was definitely the biggest highlight of Dallas for me!! The rest of the city is kind of mmmwa. Its not built for tourism. I spent some quality time at the art gallery and in the art district which was pretty nice but nothing to write home about.
One very fun thing Joep & I did was to go to the Texas State Fair which just happened to be on while we were in town! We had high hopes having heard of such wondrous things as deep fried butter, bubblegum and beer (??)!! So after Joep finished work on Thursday we headed to the fair to see what all the fuss was about.
I’m sad to say that we were pretty disappointed. We were expecting something akin to the Calgary Stampede which we loved! Instead, we walked into the fair grounds and were bombarded by … well it wasn’t pretty. Lots of seriously overweight people eating deep fried everything. Still, when in Rome right?! So we set about trying a few of the deep fried delicacies (??). After tasting deep fried pork skin, a funnel cake (which is also a deep fried delicacy) and a deep fried snickers we both felt sick. And wanted to leave.
We pushed through the pain and went to enjoy a live music show which I must say was pretty cool! Three sisters playing violins and singing. We were enjoying it so much that Joep proceeded to show me his ‘Texas Two Step’ dance moves and when he was finished and we turned to leave he was loudly applauded by the old folks behind us. A proud moment for the Joepster!
The State Fair marked the end of our week in Texas. On Friday we headed back to Laguna vowing to avoid deep fried foods for … well forever really. There is no way I will ever eat a deep fried snickers again. Disgusting!
However, the state is pretty impressive and the people are super friendly! They are also super country and state proud which is nice to see. Still, we are happy to live in California J
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