As we only spent time in the Stockyards the day before we decided to venture into Fort Worth proper on our way to Dallas (we had time to spare as the two cities are so close together). In Fort Worth we paid a visit to the Modern Art Museum which was fairly interesting and then walked around outside for a bit more – I cannot put it strongly enough that walking around outside in these parts is NOT a pleasant experience! We checked out the Fort Worth Water Gardens which was a very pleasant esperience and definitely worth (see what I did there!) a visit. From there we headed on to Dallas in our nicely air-conditioned car. Driving into Dallas was quite disappointing as I remember the TV series from my childhood, and in the opening credits they used to show the city with the tall buildings and it always looked so big and impressive…and this just looked like a fairly small city with not that many tall buildings at all! I suppose 15 years in London makes you less easily impressed?
When we arrived our room was of course not ready yet so we decided to make use of the time to walk the couple of blocks to the JFK Memorial and the 6th Floor Museum. The memorial isn’t anything to get too excited about but the museum was rather interesting – once I got over my initial irritation with the sheer amount of people they let in at a time! While the museum was very busy and therefore not that easy to navigate, it is very well put together and covers everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the 22nd November 1963; the timeline, how events went down, the witnesses, actual footage & interviews, the investigation and capture of Lee Harvey Oswald and his eventual assassination. I learned a lot of things I didn’t previously know, such as the fact that JFK’s body was on a plane out of the city within a couple of hours of him being shot and that the next president was sworn in on the same place whilst in the air. I’m sure a lot of people know all this, but his assassination happened a bit before my time and I’ve never been that interested in history!
After leaving the museum we checked out Market Street which contains a few bars and restaurants and we had a drink at Gators, where I was tempted by a gator sandwich – not! We left the bar and checked into the Crowne Plaza hotel, which was quite nice, with a good view from the 11th floor. The pool also has a rooftop pool but it was a bit too busy to my liking and we just chilled in our room until it had cooled down a bit outside and we could go out for something to eat! We went to Hoffbrau Steakhouse and Brian had a burger and I had the Smoled Tri Tip steak – which I really should stop trying out as I didn’t like it much the time I had it before, but I kind of forgot about that! The mac & cheese I had with the steak was good though so I enjoyed that! It wasn’t the most exciting day in Dallas, but we were enjoying ourselves and just taking it easy.
Biltong and Burger 