One good thing about the Westin is its green policy. Most hotels nowadays encourage their guests to use their towels and linen for more than a day to ostensibly save the environment. I have always been suspicious of how much do the cost savings figure into that request. Westin is the first hotel I know of that offers some credit (about $5) to its guests who do so. Good for them!
Hotel (for two nights): Westin Galleria, Houston.
12/4/2011 Sunday. Drove to Galveston which was about 1:30 hours away. Today was cloudy, drizzly, with the occasional rain. Galveston probably is a reasonably busy town during the summer tourist season, but today wasn't tourist season, and given the weather it was quiet. Except for the cruise terminal area. There were 2 ships docked: the Carnival Magic which is Carnival's newest ship with a capacity of 3800 passengers, and a much smaller Royal Caribbean ship. It must be start of boarding time since there was this long line of cars turning into the parking lot. A few blocks away was another event: the festival of lights. The town is obviously trying to revitalize itself; let's hope it succeeds. After lunch at Fish Tales, we drove by Moody Gardens but missed the 1 pm sightseeing trip on the Colonel. Instead we drove west and took the free ferry across to the Bolivar Peninsula. This place reminds me of the drive to Mobile from Pensacola: lot's of colorful houses built on stilts but sparsely occupied. It was about 6 pm when we got back to town. After buying tickets for tonight's Nutcracker performance, we grabbed a sandwich at a nearby cinema cafe, before seeing the performance. On the way back we stopped by Whataburger and got take-out as a late night snack.
Fish Tales Restaurant.
It was a stormy day in Galveston, TX.
This Carnival cruise ship dominates the Galveston skyline.
On the ferry Dewitt Carter from Galveston to the Bolivar Peninsula.
Nutcracker at the Houston Ballet.
12/5/2011 Monday. Checked out of hotel at 10:30 am. Went back to Waugh Street Bridge to check out if there is a place to park: answer is yes. After lunch at Bamboo, we drove south to another Wildlife Refuge (Brazolia), about 1:15 hours. There was no one at the office but there was a CD we could borrow to guide us along the auto trail. Evidently there has been a severe drought in the area so most of the lakes and ponds have turned into dry land. We did see a few birds, many of which are raptors that we don't recognize. The main attraction, snow geese, was no where to be found.
Several Roseate Spoonbills at the Brazolia Wildlife Refuge.
When we got into the Extended Stay America room, we found out it was a smoking room. Somewhere along the line someone messed out since I have never requested a smoking room before. After a few phone calls we at least got moved to a non-smoking room for tonight.
Anne has a conference call at 8 pm. So it is again fast food (Whataburger) for dinner.
Hotel (for three nights): Extended Stay America Galleria Houston.
Tuesday 12/6/2011. Anne had to get up early for her 2-hour online class. After she was done we debated a bit what to do, and decided to visit museums since today would turn out to be quite cold, and breezy to boot. We ended up going to the Museum of Fine Arts. MFAH has a huge collection of artifacts (a lot of them gold) from pre-Columbian cultures in Mid- and South Africa. The displays are a bit confusing for the uninitiated, like me. We ran into an archeologist and I ended up having a long discussion with him, including if the Biblical story of Cain and Abel was an allegory for farmers and hunter-gatherers. There is also a substantial collection of paintings. Although Anne and I enjoy looking at them, we are by no means knowledgeable about the various schools and their representatives. In that sense MFAH collections would be what I call B-list painters. They do have token ones from each of the grand masters: Picasso, Monet, Manet, Turner, etc. It is nonetheless nice to spend some time with these great works of art. We ended up spending over 4 hours there, including a very reasonably-priced lunch. And the price of admission is very reasonable, with our AAA and USC-student discount, it cost a total of $8.50 for the two of us.
We then ventured to Chinatown, walked around a bit, and then had an early dinner at Tin Tin Restuarant.
After dropping Anne off at the hotel - she had another conference call tonight - I drove to Jones Hall to attend a Houston Symphony concert. The concert was great, except I found out the hard way (a $70 parking ticket) that what I thought was free parking was a tow-away restricted zone. I guess I should count as a blessing that the car wasn't towed.
Houston Symphony, Eschenbach conducting Mahler's Fifth Symphony.
I got a parking ticket parked next to this sign. To my surprise my appeal based on confusing signage was successful. And it was done over the web!
We did have to change our room in the morning. We opened the window for the day and it didn't smell that bad when we got back.
Wednesday 12/7/2011. First drove to Armand Bayou Nature Center, hoping there were birds to see. Turns out it was a park with many walking trails, so we decided to skip it. We then drove along the coast (Route 146) and had a buffet lunch at a restaurant along the Kemah Boardwalk. Pretty inexpensive, reasonably good food. Nowadays with buffet meals I feel guilty for eating too much, and guilty for not eating my money's worth. Johnson Space Center was next on our list. We first took a 1 1/2 hour tram ride which brought us to Mission Control for all the Apollo explorations, a building where astronauts train with mock ups of various spacecraft, and Rocket Park where the main attraction is a Saturn V rocket. It was after 3:30 pm when we were done with the ride, and we had only time to see a couple of short movies clips before the facility closed at 5 pm. It was a good visit. Sadly, I couldn't help but think the bold and exciting space exploration days no longer belong to this country, and won't return for a long time. Somehow the sense of melancholy seemed to permeate what we saw around us.
Mission Control at Johnson Space Center.
A Saturn V.
We then stopped by the Waught Street Bridge again, getting there at a little before 6 pm. The noise we heard before was much softer; in any case, bat sighting wasn't to be on this trip.
It was too cold for the bats to venture out at night, so we had to be content with reading the different signs posted near the Waught Street bridge.
This is a picture of a sign. We didn't see any bats in the crevices, but heard them chirping away, though.
Dinner at Shanghai Restaurant in Chinatown. The mixed up our order so we had to cancel a casserole dish - I didn't want to wait for the dish to be recooked. Instead bought some noodles for a midnight snack.
Since Anne won't be done with her class until 10 am, we moved our flight from 12 noon to 2:30 pm. We couldn't get any aisle seats, so it would be a bit uncomfortable.
Thursday 12/8/2011. Anne got done early with her conference call, so we scrabbled to get to the airport. At 11:45 am or so we were called to the podium to get our tickets for our 12 noon flight. And they were aisle seats! The flight back was quite a bit shorter at about 3 hours. Ellie picked us up. After dropping our luggage off, we had dinner at Olive Garden in Piscataway, with Kuau joining us.
