After we landed

Houston was my first place outside of Syracuse in the U.S., not counting my stay with family-friends (such an odd term) in NJ when I first got here. Until then I didn't particularly think that Syracuse was lame, ignorance being bliss and all. But the following trips to different cities, really built up the case against it.

   

The first cool thing that I came across in Houston was this space-cow at the airport. Despite all the art that we checked out in museums (including favorites like Keefe), this is the only one that stuck in my head. Its true to context and I like the irreverence, pride and the bull-headed ambition that it represents. Also, having a familiar domestic animal in the picture somehow makes it warm.     

                

There were a lot of cool stuff at the natural science museum. Mikes favorite, I believe, was the Hall of Gems and mine was probably the Hall of Paleontology. Nope, wait, it was the Butterfly center. But these came in second. The butterfly center (no pic) had a rain forest conservatory with butterflies flying about. It gave me this sense of being grounded, yet free at the same time. This was also the first place where Mike and I fantasized about saving a lot of money and retiring after 7 years; we thought of how neat it would be if we had a conservatory and what we would want in it.

 

Right outside the downtown aquarium, there were these pumpkin coaches. We did not ride on it, but I definitely would have if Nats was with me. She is the only person I can think of whom I would want to share any kind of fairy tale fantasy with. The aquarium itself was a fun but odd little place. For some reason, they had two white tigers, relaxed and very couply.

             

We ran into these guys at the zoo. The jellyfish were beautiful (which reminds me, I should check out an underwater movie one of these days). The meerkats loved every minute of the limelight. They posed for the camera and literally followed us and did the wait, wait, look at me, I can pose like this too, when we started moving on. Mike was pretty bummed though, especially when he saw the elephants doing tricks and the leopards lying about. 

As for the rest of the city, Houston is obviously nothing like New York or even Chicago. Its kinda spread out, with deadish looking places in between. But by the look of it there are plenty of things to do and places to shop and eat, some authentic Mexican and the more interesting brand of American food, like the Armadillo Palace.