Houston

Sunday 5th April 2009

Today we went from Dallas to Houston.

We left our Dallas hotel around 8:30am, drove to Love Field returned the rental car and caught the shuttle bus to the terminal.  Our Southwest Airlines flight left right on time at 10:00am and landed at Houston's Hobby Field a little less than an hour later.  No probs with luggage and car rental - only problem was that I dropped the GPS and it no longer works.  So we bumbled our way to a Best Buy and bought another GPS.

We tried to check into our hotel around 1pm but no luck, they are snowed under and we can't check in till 3pm.  So it was out into the traffic and to do some shopping.

Got back to the hotel around 2:30pm and hung around till we checked in at a bit after 3pm.

Just after 4pm we headed off to the Reliant Stadium, a 10 minute walk away, for Wrestlemania.

Took some getting into and then Scott found himself sitting next to a woman of around 350 pounds who took up part of his seat as well.  Then when another large woman sat on the other side and Scott's neighbour moved even further into his seat he had had enough. He went off and complained and we were moved to other seats, much better seats, so we did well.

Wrestlemania is quite an event - 72,000+ people - very impressive effects and we had a great time with the highlight being the Shawn Michaels v Undertaker epic.

The show went around 4 hours and afterwards we walked back to the hotel and stopped in at a Shoney's restaurant - must have been around 10:30pm.   They were obviously unprepared for the influx of Wrestlemania people and the service was abysmal.  Worst we have ever had in the USA.  Little food and Scott's burger had no sauce and when we asked for some the server just shrugged.  Then when I refused to pay for Scott's food the manager came out.  He was great, we paid for just my food and drink, don't think the server was too impressed.  She was useless.  I paid the $6.48 bill with cash - $6.50.  No way was I paying a tip for this service,  I just handed over the cash and walked out.

Now I am in the hotel room, it is 1:13am and time for bed. Pardon the mistakes above but the internet connection is poor and I need to get this done in a hurry.

Monday 6th April 2009

The reason for staying another day in Houston was to go to the Monday Night RAW another wrestling event.

To be close to the event, the Toyota Center, we moved hotels.

So we started this day by checking out of our hotel around 10:00am.  I had wanted to go to a Shipley Do-nuts store near the Johnson Space Centre - we went there back in 2001 and they were the best donuts ever.  We GPS'ed the store and found it to be 42 k's away - a bit far.  So we GPS'ed the nearest Shipley Store and found one 500 metres away.  So we went there for brekkie.  Good donuts but not as good as I remember from 2001, we had hot chocolate in a Shipley mug, that was nice.  I think the secret of good donuts in the USA is that they cook only a few at a time and so they are fresh.  In Oz they seem to cook them at the beginning of the day and that's it - they also cover them with too thick a glazing where as here they just seem to be lightly glazed and fresh......... anyway!!!!

After the breakfast we headed to a Fry's Electrical store and had a look around - I got a camera for Rayls and Scott pottered around as only he can in one of these stores.

Then we headed into downtown Houston and to our Holiday Inn hotel.  We were a bit early so Scott wandered across to the stadium to collect the tickets and I used the hotel laundromat.  There was a problem with one of the dryers so they got us to hand over the wet clothes and they dried them, folded them and brought them up to our room - bliss.  I did get to speak cricket with a gentleman who noticed my Kenwick Cricket Club shirt.  Apparently there is 20 teams in a competition here in Houston.  This gentleman ended up being the owner of the hotel and a pleasure and interesting to talk to.

Then we pottered around till 6:30pm when we walked the 3 minute walk to the stadium.  We made the mistake of deciding to have arena food as there was no restaurants nearby.  Like last night the service was abysmal and took until the start of the event to get our food.  Very frustrating - the Americans in line just seem to accept this poor service but tough for us Aussies to take.

We had good seats for the event although the wombat in front of us stood up for longer than he really should have.

Wrestling seems to be the only event where they encourage people to stand up and hold signs blocking the view of others behind.

Good event and there seems to be a rivalry starting between the McMahon Family and Randy Orton.  I am not that much into the wrestling but they do put on a good show and my friend Scott in LA tells me that I need to enjoy the soap opera effect of the behiond the scenes stuff.

After the wrestling we headed back to the hotel and tried to get to sleep as quickly as possible as we had to be up at 4:00am for a 6:00am flight.

I love the USA, it is a great place but I have to say I don't like Houston.  Not as clean as other cities and the people don't seem to be as friendly as other places.   We will be glad to get out of here and move on.