One thing from my previous post I didn't get a chance to mention was the food I had on the first night in Houston. I really wanted to try some texmex, after some people in our hostel raved about it, so I went to a restaurant which claimed it had the best texmex food in town. And who am I to disagree... It was delicious, and at first I thought they had made a mistake by giving me two plates (nachos and enchiladas), but apparently that's just what they do here (hence why I would balloon if I lived here).
Houston overall has been far more relaxed than expected, and the hostel we were staying in reflected this. There are some fun restaurants and bars nearby but most evenings were spent discussing travels with others at the hostel. It's been interesting because there is such a wide variety of people who come to visit Texas (which I found fairly surprising), from other parts of North America and Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia, and we got many more travelling tips for the future as a result.
Although the hostel was laid back, there were some excursions organised to places of local interest, and I went along to a trip to the museum district. The Natural History and Science museum really gave away that this was Texas... The biggest exhibit was about how to dig for oil and natural gas. They have some fairly unusual takes on natural history too, and as I was browsing one of the dinosaur exhibits I heard two guys asking where Adam and Eve come into all this...
I also took a day to visit the Johnson Space Centre (I really love space...), during which I was given a tour of the mission control room from which the first excursion to the moon was based. Similarly I got to see the persevered remains of the Saturn V rocket, and other cool stuff from the Apollo missions. On the way to the space centre I had to wait for a bus in downtown Houston, and I got talking to a local girl called Shoniqua, who started laughing at me because I was trying to stay in the shade at the bus stop. Shoniqua was great, very funny, and had some interesting views on things that I would like to share. According to Shoniqua:
- More people vote for American Idol than for the President
- People in Houston hate Beyonce
- Li' Wayne is the greatest rapper of all time (... apparently I have good music taste)
- The Queen of England is really young, just got married to 'some bald guy' and is pregnant...
Seriously though, it was an enjoyable bus ride, and I even got a queue jump at the space centre (Shoniqua was an employee there).
That evening we joined others at the hostel for a dinner put on by local members of the community, who had been involved with hostels in Houston for about 30 years. Also in attendance was a local evangelical preacher, and former Vice-Presidential candidate, named Wiley Drake, who was broadcasting his radio show from the hostel. It's ironic actually - ol' Wiley is a staunch homophobe and outspoken racist, and the Morty Rich Hostel is one of the liberal hubs of the surrounding area, so god knows why he chose to stay there... Please google his name though, some of the stuff he comes out with is completely nuts, but very entertaining - even George W. Bush described him as a loon...
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