Then we negotiated the Houston traffic...!

The drive from the airport to the hotel believe it or not is almost as long as driving from Durban to Pietermaritzburg. Houston is so big. The airport is on the north side and the hotel is in the south side very close to Johnson Space Centre. Finally we got to the hotel about hour after leaving the airport. We couldn't believe the number of cars driving at 5pm on a Saturday evening. It was like weekday rush hour!

Space Shuttle mission control centre

JFK Lecturn Rice University

Sunday we visited the Johnson Space Centre. Not as spectacular as Kennedy, but still had a few worthwhile items to see including a tour of the Space Shuttle mission control centre.

Lone Star Flight Museum - B-17

Lone Star Flight Museum - Spitfire

Monday we went down to Galvestone and visited the Lone Star Flight museum there. We also drove to the dockyard side of Galvestone and saw the cruiseliner Ecstacy there. We stayed around a bit and at 5pm it set sail, so we were able to see it depart. Candi has never seen a cruiseship depart from a dock. It is always spectacular and interesting to watch.

Ecstacy Cruiseliner

Tuesday we headed north to one of the smaller airfields and found a flight school who were willing to take me for an "introductory flight" with an instructor to exercise my piloting skills here in the states. We flew in a C172 just north of the field around a lake area, then returned to the airfield. The flight was about an hour and they only charge $99 for the flight! (R730) but then they classed it as an introductory flight.

Final Approach in C172

Tuesday we returned our car to Hertz and caught the Greyhound bus to Fort Worth.

written by  Candi&Damian on September 1, 2007 from Houston, United States
from the travel blog: Candy and Damian USA Aug/Sept 2007
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First we headed to the stock yard district just outside the city and had a look around. Although it is really a centre for trading in cattle, horses and other farm animals, it is build like an old western town with lots of craft shops and similar topical services. Much like places like the heritage market in Hillcrest except with a ranch/cow boy theme.

We returned to the transport centre and then headed off to the "cultural centre" district. We went into the botanical gardens and had a look. Then we went in search of a museum or two. We discovered that the science and history museum has just been shut recently for rebuilding and is only going to open again in 2 years time! In the end we didn't actually find much in the way of culture in that district.

We returned to the city and made our way to the city centre to find a resturant to get dinner. After eating we walked around a bit before returning to the transport centre to catch our bus back to the hotel.

Now the city and surrounds are exceptionally clean and tidy. One really feels at home here however...where are the people? The botanical gardens were pretty much deserted. You wouldn't find that in Durban at any time of day. The city centre at 5pm was very quiet. There wasn't much traffic, very few pedestrians. We wondered where all the workers were. Strange indeed, definitely nothing hectic about life here. If anything somewhat dull. It actually isn't a very large city - you can walk from one end of the downtown region to the other in about 15 minutes.

written by  Candi&Damian on September 5, 2007 from Fort Worth, United States
from the travel blog: Candy and Damian USA Aug/Sept 2007
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