Santa Fe

I have nothing against the practice of trying to get your cool on in public.  I have so little of my own to exploit and put on display that I'm often a little envious when I witness others produce theirs and put it on parade.  

However, the downside to trying to come off as uber cool is that it can often render one as somewhat brittle and dispassionate.  Not overly friendly to four road-weary but enthusiastic tourists in other words.

In that case, I'll take nice over cool any day.

This is not to say that there were not genial, sociable folks in Santa Fe.  There were.  It just took us a couple of hours to meet them.

But when we did find them, it was lovely.  

And the city was striking, like one of those incredibly photogenic people who can't seem to take a bad photo.  

Particularly at sunset.

So here you go.

San Antonio

There is no concrete reason for why I wanted to go to San Antonio.  I knew nothing about the city other than that it was somewhere in the southwest.
I just liked the sound of the name.
Not a very auspicious starting point, to be sure.  It could have ended with us in a hotel room with a view of a parking structure in the foreground, a Walmart sign in the distance and flat, arid scrubland beyond.
Happily, it was not so.
San Antonio is lush and well-watered (check out the Riverwalk) and exceptionally clean.  Probably the cleanest city I've ever been to in my life.  There was a surprisingly eclectic mix of folks: "remember the Alamo" proud-to-be-an-American Texans; tattooed, pierced hipsters drinking espresso in coffee shops; sandal-wearing, silver-bejewled artists, and Latinos strolling about in cowboy hats and boots.

We stayed in an historic hotel in the center of town where a trio of musicians (bass, piano and drums) played nightly in the lounge and the guests included a large population of army personnel.  They filled the elevators and lounge with their crew cuts, fatigues and "yes ma'am, no ma'am" manners from a by-gone age.

We were charmed.  I know I've said that about places before.  But really, we were thoroughly charmed.  If you can't make it all the way to Budapest, go to San Antonio for a weekend instead.  Unless cleanliness, good manners and reasonable prices do not appeal to you. In that case, go to New York City.

Yeah, once again, way too many photos.  However, since I was kind of a slacker with the last two posts I am overcompensating.
At the risk of sounding like a cry baby, not having internet access at the hotel at which one is staying creates difficulty when trying to maintain continuity with this blog.  It's a travel blog and sometimes the travel part gets in the way of the blogging part.

Houston

Our stop in Houston is the result of Facebook.
Yes, I have an account.  It's a love/hate relationship.  Mostly I hate it but it loves me back by providing me with an asoif group wherein I can spew some of my literary obsessions and where I can also communicate with the four people with whom I might otherwise lose contact (you know who you are).  And that's it.  I despise the sophmoric nature of the "like" button and yet I use it liberally.  I wish it were called the "oh yeah, ha, sure, I get you" button. Then maybe I wouldn't wince so hard every time I click it.

But I digress, as usual.
Back to the point.

Houston wasn't originally on the itinerary.  Not that I have anything against the Space City but we thought we'd barrel on through to San Antonio without stopping other than bladder relief and the partaking of Texas bar-b-que.

But via Facebook, I realized my ex co-worker Sid recently moved there.
Sid, the man to whom I used to run with my seemingly endless charting issues and who would, in his halcyon manner, solve them all.  How could we not divert a couple of miles off the interstate and say hello?
We could not.
And, because I'm not seeing patients and therefore have no charting to do, he agreed to meet us for dinner since there was a near 100% guarantee that I would not ask him Medicare reimbursement questions.
Sid, you're a prince among men.

Thanks to Sid and Megan for a lovely evening of Mexican food, margaritas (or was that Makers Mark and Coke?) and good company.

There are cool things to do in Houston.  Things like art festivals to go to and parks to walk in.  According to Sid and Megan and this book...

...we could have spent hours doing and seeing interesting things while we were in Houston.
Instead we spent our time napping in the hotel room, watching Spanglish and uploading a thousand photos and trying to catch up on blogging.
So this is what you all get of Houston:

It's a city that smells like money.  And it's much greener than I expected.  But that's about all I can tell you.
I can, however, provide details on the plot and characters of Spanglish; a surprisingly enjoyable little bit of Adam Sandler and Cloris Leachman.  But I'm guessing you don't tune in here for movie reviews, you'd rather I stick to the script and give you more photos of Houston.
Oops.
Next up, San Antonio.  Don't worry, I'll do better on that one.