The Bishop Arts District and a good samaritan (Throwback post)

 One of our favourite parts of Dallas had to be the Bishop Arts District.  It was a bit of a haul out there, and the good bit are a few up and coming streets in what has been a relatively run down area, but it is worth the visit.

There are some lovely little independent stores, including Dudes Sweet Chocolates, which were very tasty.  We also found a great cafe called Oddfellows.

Now Oddfellows turned out to be even better that we had thought it was on our second visit, and not just for the food.  Our overnight Megabus out of Dallas had been booked when the downtown stop wasn't available, so we had to go to Fort Worth to pick it up.  With a distinct lack of buses to get there, we had decided to go back to the Bishop Arts District, which is part way, have something to eat at the cafe, and then get a taxi the rest of the way.

Our server had called the taxi company and they had said they didn't take prebookings but to call back when we needed the cab.  So we enjoyed our meal and a good chat with our server and then she phoned again.  And then they told her they don't go out that far.  We're only talking about a ten minute drive!  We couldn't believe it.  She couldn't believe it.  But we couldn't get a cab, and we had no other way of getting there.

As we were thinking about how we could get ourselves onto this bus, our server came back to us and provided us with the solution.  She had already spoken to one of the guys she worked with and arranged for him to drive us there in her own car. Needless to say, we were very grateful to her and gave her an excellent tip.

So he drove us to the bus stop and we made it in good time, very relieved to be on our way to Memphis.

How lovely - and lucky - to meet people who are kind enough to put themselves out to help a couple of complete strangers.

St Patrick's Day, Dallas style (Throwback post)

I don't know whether it is the leprechauns, but people across the globe, especially but not only the english speaking areas, seem to want to claim a bit of Irish ancestry.  Sadly I suspect the real reason people like the idea of being Irish is that they associate the nationality with Guinness, Craic and a whole lot  of drinking.

There are of course a lot of people with some Irish ancestry in other countries, particularly the States as so many emigrated there in the 1840s when they were hit by the potato famine.  But whilst there may be a bit of Irish blood there somewhere, it is pretty well diluted by now, and most of the descendants have never even been to Ireland, so I do find all of this claiming to be Irish just a bit ridiculous.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't recognise their ancestry, but really, when you were born in the States, your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were born in the States, you've lived your whole life in the States, have a US accent, never even leave the States for a holiday, and obsess about the right to carry a gun, then face it, you're not Irish.

Mind you, it appears that being Irish may not matter anyway, as St Patrick was not Irish himself!  He was from Great Britain and was taken to Ireland as a child worker.  It is not clear where in Britain he was from; Scotland and Wales are both possibilities, but it is suggested he was from the north of England.

But whether people are truly Irish or not, there are Irish Bars everywhere.  Some are more "authentic" than others; for example I remain entirely unconvinced by the 'traditional Irish curry' being advertised in an Irish bar in Skopje, Macedonia.  And half the world seems to celebrates St Patrick's Day.

We were in Dallas for St Patrick's Day this year, and we joined our Couchsurfing hosts at the parade.  There were certainly great swathes of emerald green being worn, a lot of Guinness hats and 'kiss me I'm Irish' t-shirts.  And there was a lot of alcohol being consumed.

But aside from the green shamrock festooned decor, the parade itself could have been any other parade.  There was one pipes and drums band at the start, but beyond that there was not a hint of Irish music, traditional or otherwise.  There was no celebration of Irish ancestry or heritage here, unless of course your understanding of Irish culture is simply that a lot of drinking is done.

I'm not for a second suggesting that the Irish don't drink on St Patrick's Day, or a lot more often than that, but it is quite sad when that is the full extent of their attempt at embracing the culture.  And by the way, calling it St Paddy's Day may be OK, but St Patty's Day is just wrong!

And on the subject of drinking, where on earth do Budweiser get the idea that they can, with any seriousness, take a holiday that is famed for the consumption of Guinness, and use it to advertise Bud light!

So am I just being a miserable killjoy?  Well maybe, but I don't think so.  I like to see people celebrating their own culture and that of other people.  I like a good drink.  I just find it laughable that people pretend so hard to be something that they very clearly are not, just so they have an excuse to drink.  After all - who needs an excuse!

Book depositories and grassy knolls (Throwback post)

Our hosts, and a few other local people asked us why we had come to Dallas.  In their experience, Dallas isn't generally high on the list of places that tourists go to, with most people choosing Austin and San Antonio instead.  And in truth, a large part of our decision was that it was a convenient place to stop on the bus route.

And we had to admit that we didn't know much about the place other than the two things that probably come to mind for most people - the TV show with the Ewings, and the assassination of John F Kennedy.

So we had to visit the book depository and see the infamous grassy knoll.

JFK was assassinated during a motorcade through Dealey plaza in Dallas on 22 November 1963.  Despite some known tensions in Texas, and Dallas in particular, JFK opted for an open topped limo.  As it turns out, this was not a good choice.  Had it been raining, they would have used a bubble top and he would have been protected.

The building on the corner of Dealey Plaza, which was once the Texas School Book Depository, now houses a museum about Kennedy and his assassination.  It is interesting enough, despite being laid out in a very awkward way so that we found ourselves having to go back and forth to get the order right.

The museum gives you a bit of background about Kennedy and his presidency, and goes into some detail about the assassination, setting out the story largely in line with the findings of the Warren Commission.  What it didn't really do, was get into the whole conspiracy theory arguments that Lee Harvey Oswald was set up, or acting with others.

Aside from a few mentions of the grassy knoll and a bit of forensic information about bullet trajectories and so forth, there was little to enable you to reach any firm conclusion if you were trying to decide for yourself what actually happened.  They did look at Oswald's potential motivation, indicating that his enthusiasm for Cuba may have led him to dislike Kennedy and his administration.  I read one report that suggested that he was planning to move to Cuba which, if true, could mean that he was hoping to gain favour with Fidel Castro by the assassination.

Personally, I see no compelling reasons to doubt that it was Lee Harvey Oswald who shot JFK, or to persuade me that there was a second gunman. There are some elements that don't quite seem to add up.  I am not convinced by the whole 'magic bullet' story, in which the first bullet misses entirely, the second 'magic' bullet passed through JFK and then hit Governor Connelly too, but then came out almost pristine and the third being the fatal shot to JFK's head; instead I prefer the version that has the first bullet hitting JFK, the second hitting Connelly, and the third being the fatal head shot. But who knows!

Of course Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby before there was any chance to find out his story, which has helped to fire the conspiracy theories.

What we do know, is that the assassination shocked the USA; it is said that everyone from the USA knows where they were when they heard that JFK had been shot.

Had he not died, he could well have gone on to win the 1964 election, but may have lost a lot of popularity over his determination to get the Civil Rights Act passed, and over the continuation of the Vietnam War.

But without the time for his administration to sour in the way that so many do, JFK is regularly voted one of the favourite US Presidents.  Like Marilyn Monroe and Diana, Princess of Wales, early death has washed away the negatives and turned John Fitzgerald Kennedy into an icon.

Couchsurfing in Dallas (Throwback post)

I mentioned couchsurfing in our Daytona Beach posting, where we had our first go at it, but it was here in Dallas that we had our first 'proper' Couchsurfing experience.

Couchsurfing is a global community of around six million people that started up in 2004.  As the name suggests, members of the community surf each others couches.  Although in fact, it is a lot more than that. Our first experience in Daytona was a soft entry into the world, as Georgy was actually offering a private bedroom with an ensuite bathroom, so it was little different to our Airbnb stays in that way.  But we paid nothing for it.  Obviously we took along a bottle of wine, and we bought a few beers to share with him one night, but the stay itself cost us nothing and he cooked a meal for us on the one evening that we were all in.  

In Dallas, our experience was a little different, and we were actually on a couple of couches in the living room.  We initially had applied to a couple of people who offered beds in spare rooms, but they were not available.  Ruiz and Maya saw our request and offered to host us on their couches.  And so we ended up doing our first proper Couchsurfing on couches.  Mind you, they were big comfy couches and it was a lovely home.

At this point, many people adding this are probably thinking the same things that we thought when we first heard of this scheme: a) why would you go and stay with a complete stranger like this; and b) why on earth would they let a complete stranger stay with them for free?

Well in the first place, Couchsurfing suggests we should think of people not as complete strangers, but rather as 'friends we haven't met yet'.  And you don't just stay with an entirely random person.  When you sign up to the scheme you fill out a profile which tells people a bit about who you are and what you're like. and hosts and guests leave reviews on each other so that any bad experiences can be flagged and warn off others.  We have certainly found that you can get a reasonable idea about the people this way, and so we decide who we might like to stay with based on that - and hosts do the same when deciding who to accept.

There are potential risks in the scheme, especially when people just stay with anyone, even if there is nothing on their profile, but we choose to be more careful than that, and would recommend the same to anyone else starting out in it.  Reading the profiles and references, seeing who they have hosted before (ie a lone female who doesn't want to get hit on may not want to stay with some guy who only ever seems to host attractive young women), and having the wherewithal to abandon the Couchsurfing and find somewhere else to stay if you feel uncomfortable when you arrive and all good things to think about.

As to the money, well people's reasons for doing it vary.  To a degree the scheme is aiming to be reciprocal, in that it is hoped that if you stay with people, you will also host people.  We can't host at present and we don't live anywhere permanently, but we will do so when we have an opportunity in the future.

But in fact many of the people who host rarely, if ever, travel themselves.  Hosting people who do travel, from all over the world, is their way of meeting new people, and of hearing about new places and travel experiences.  One couple we met in Dallas actually bought a bigger home so that they could host more people, just because they find it such a rewarding thing to do.

And it isn't just about staying with people.  The aim is to create a real community, so the site has conversation threads where people arrange just simply to meet someone for coffee and show them around their home town, or where a lone traveller can hook up with other travellers for a road trip or to go hiking etc.

They also arrange events.  The regular meeting is normally in a bar, where hosts, other locals and travellers meet up, whether they are currently surfing or not.  But they also have pot luck dinners, where everyone takes a dish of food to someone's home, they organize groups to go along to local events, and all sorts of things.  It just depends on how involved and imaginative the local couchsurfers are.

So in Dallas, our hosts took us along to the regular meetup.  Actually we arrived before them, so for the first time we had that slightly strange experience of walking up to a likely looking group of people and asking 'are you the Couchsurfing group?' On this occasion we were right, but it doesnt always work, and we got a few strange looks when we picked the wrong group one time in Canada. There may be a need for a Couchsurfers' lapel pin I think!

The Dallas group was great, with lots of really friendly people, some of whom are now Facebook friends and we may one day catch up with on our respective travels.  We also met with one couple who we had applied to stay with but who already had a family member staying at the time.  They picked us up from our hosts, took us out to lunch,  and then drove us across town to where we wanted to be next.

We also joined our hosts at a bloc party at a nearby art gallery, and for St Patrick's Day.

So that is Couchsurfing in a nutshell.  It is a great idea.  It gives us a chance to both save a bit of money if we are staying just a few days, and to meet new people who are genuinely interested in getting to know you a bit.  Hosts and locals make the effort to help travellers get to know their town, sometimes with a few insider tips about places that are not in the guide books, and you may just make a new friend for life.

A Devil Dog and a BBQ Pit (Throwback post)

When Emily, our Antarctica friend returned, we moved on to her place.  She is a pilot, training to take her commercial pilot's license, so is working at the airstrip in Georgetown.  She had been away at an airshow with their WWII B-25 Devil Dog bomber plane.

It is great to make new friends during our travels, but as they tend to live a long way off, getting to see them is a problem, so if we have the chance to include their home town in our travels, or if we find that we are visiting the same place at the same time as someone else, then we like to take the opportunity.  It was good to catch up with Emily this way.

After just catching up on news and having a few drinks on the first evening, Emily had planned a trip out to lunch for our full day with her.  But not just to a local place.  She was flying us to lunch at a BBQ pit fifty miles away in Llano.

At the Georgetown airstrip, we stopped to look at the Devil Dog.  This is one of the few remaining Patrol Bomber J (PBJ) B-25 bombers from WWII.  The PPJs were surplus to the US Navy requirements, so the US Marines took them instead.

The most famous bombing raid for these B-25s was the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo on 1 April 1942.  Led by Lt Col James Doolittle, this was a retaliation against Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbour. The raid was completed, but the cost was most of the bombers being crash landed in China.

We climbed up inside, trying to imagine being in the plane with a full crew and trying to survive in enemy skies.  We couldn't see it being a pleasant experience.

While in the hangar, we noticed a wall covered in old t-shirts and shirts, all with messages written on them.  Emily explained that traditionally when you complete your pilot license, they take the shirt you are wearing and add it to the wall.  So if you are learning to fly here, remember not to wear your favourite shirt that day!

It didn't take long to fly to Llano.  It wasn't exactly a scenic flight, as there wasn't much to look at on the ground, but it gave us a good idea of just how much open space there is in Texas.

We picked up one of the courtesy cars that the BBQ leaves at the airport specifically for people like us flying in to go and eat there for the short drive into town.  And driving through Llano, you could feel the difference from the other places we had been to.  We were in cowboy country now, with the saddle shops and other such businesses in full evidence.

At the Coopers Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que, we couldn't resist trying a number of the meats on offer as they all looked amazing.

Of course even a little bit of them amounted to quite a large meal, so we were somewhat full by the end of it, but it was very tasty indeed.  The brisket beef in particular was excellent.  This would certainly be a place worth making a detour to if you are anywhere near the area.

Keeping Austin wierd (Throwback post)

From Houston it was another bus trip to Austin, Texas, where we happened to arrive during South-by-SouthWest, a huge festival that encompasses technology, film and music elements.  Unfortunately we were there during the technology bit rather than the music bit, and to be quite honest we really couldn't be bothered to queue up to go into the events that were open to the public, so we gave it a miss.  We did discover a few sites where you can get free or reduced tickets to events though, so if you do plan to go at any time, do a bit of internet research before you spend your money.

So why were we in Austin if not for SXSW?  Well, in the main, it was (a) on the bus route and (b) where we could meet up with one of our travel buddies from our first Antarctica trip.  We'll come back to our catch up with Emily later, as she was away for the first few days, so we had a few days to look around Austin ourselves first.

We stayed in an Airbnb place that was actually a tent in a back garden.  It was a good size tent with the very civilised addition of an air bed, and was fine the first night.  However on the second night there was an almighty storm and the tent started leaking.  Thankfully the woman whose place it was quickly ushered us inside and we set up our bed in her dining room, much to the interest and excitement of her friendly dogs.

We had no particular tourist activities on the agenda for Austin, so we simply enjoyed wandering around the town. The motto for the city is 'Keep Austin Wierd', and whilst we wouldn't call it weird exactly, we could kind of see why, as by comparison to most places we had been in the States, it is far more laid back and unconventional. And where else has a recreation of the Bates motel from Psycho?

We especially like South Congress.  We were a bit unsure to start with because as we started walking up the road it seemed that there was nothing there at all.  But just as we were about to give up, we reached the good bit.

As well as lots of interesting shops to poke about in, and in my case buy a few bits of jewellery, we found a few places to sit and have a drink while listening to live music.  In the spirit of weirdness, one of these was outdoors and there was a couple who had brought their pet parrot out with them, and had it sitting on their shoulders.

There was a great cafe called Woodland, where we had our first US cream pies.  Very tasty.  We also ate at Snack Bar, which had a great patio, nice food and some good drinks on the list.

Outside of South Congress we found a few other places to eat and drink including the Le Cafe Crepe and Cru Wine Bar, which had a great selection of wines with champagne half price on Thursdays - how could we say no to that?