Dallas

Friday 4th April.

Today we were up early, packed and on our way from the hotel.

We dropped the rental car off and caught the rental shuttle bus to the airport.

Our stay in Phoenix has been brief but it seems a nice city - nice blue skies and lots of open spaces and fresh air.  Lots of palms and cactus.  Reminds both if us a little of Perth, except for the cactus.

Southwest Airlines check in was easy and our flight, Southwest 33, backed out only a few minutes late but then took 25 minutes to taxi to the end of the runway - busy time.

Our flight to El Paso was just over an hour and we were on the ground there for around 20 minutes before another flight of just over an hour to Dallas - Love Field.

Getting the bags and renting the car was easy and it was a 20 minute drive downtown to the Westin Hotel.  Nice place.

We lost a couple of hours today and with the flights it was after 3pm before we checked in. 

No real time to do much so we spent time relaxing and catching up with internet stuff.

Around 6:30pm we went to Dennys and then a quick visit to Dealey Plaza.  We will go back there tomorrow.  The flags at the plaza, American and Texan, were at half mast. Not sure why, maybe the shootings at Binghamton.

Saturday 4th April.

Good day for me.

We started late, 11:00am before we got to the donut shop in the hotel and had breakfast - even had a sausage roll, nothing like a sausage roll in Oz.

Then got the car and headed to Dealey Plaza.  We went up to the Sixth Floor Museum  and checked out the JFK stuff.  We had been hwere in 2001, nothing much has changed in the museum - but it is a good way to spend a couple of hours.  Even Scott seemed to enjoy it.  The Seventh Floor now has an area dedicated to photographer Bob Jackson who took many assassination photographs including the famous Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald photo.  After the museum we went into the store and looked around.

After this we checked out Dealey Plaza - maybe an hour just taking it all in.  Listening to people around the area most seem sure there was a conspriracy and more than one shooter was involved.  Personally I think Lee Harvey Oswald was a nut - acting alone.

Back to the car we went to the house where Lee Harvey Oswald had the famous back yard photo taken.  Guy sitting on the porch in a wheelchair asked for $5 for us to take a photo in the backyard.  There was two other ladies there and although a photo would have been nice it just seemed a bit sus.

We took another photo around the corner and were confronted by another dude so we took off.  This is a pretty low class area.  We drove past the Texas Theater where Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and to the intersection of Tenth and Patton where Oswald shot Office JD Tippit.  That sort of ended our JFK stuff for the day.

It was 4pm by this time and we wanted to have lunch/a dinner at Cracker Barrell so we GPS'ed on 23 K's away and got caught up in some interesting traffic and some very weird suggestions by the GPS - poor Scott was ready to throw the GPS out gthe window.  In the end we went well out of our way and ended up driving through Dealey Plaza again as we crossed Dallas.

Cracker Barrell was well worth the visit - good service and very good food.

Got back to the hotel around 5pm and relaxed a bit before at 6pm we walked the 1.2 miles to the American Airlines Arena for an ice hockey game between the Dallas Stars and the St Louis Blues.  Good game and went to overtime before the Stars won.  Happy home town crowd.

We walked the 1.2 miles back to the hotel and Scott watched the Kings on his computer whilst I typed this whilst watching Schrek.