Galveston, TX

New Orleans style houses

The Garden House close to the Post Office. Creepy crickets chirping and birds singing only in the yard of this “house.”

Oil rig behind the Elissa

Galveston is kind of strange. It is full of 5 types of people.

1. Students and other people working at UTMB
2. Hippie wannabes
3. Retired Winter Texans
4. Poor black people
5. Rich white BOIs.

I’m really sorry for those who are really into this Born On the Island thing, but it doesn’t mean a thing to me.

And although the beach is lovely, I was NOT impressed that everyone kept telling me not to walk around at night alone. Sheesh.

I stayed at the Sandpiper Motel, and it was nice enough, and I wasn’t itchy. And after the Crossland hotel in Nashville, that is VERY important to me.

The Sandpiper Motel, cheap accomodations. Great access to the beach.

The hostel portion of the Sandpiper Motel is great because it has a FREE WASHER AND DRYER! WOO HOO! Stinky socks in your suitcase is not a pleasant thing to have to stuff next to your business suit.

Plus, the Walgreens and Arlan’s Market (groceries) were both within walking distance (BUT NOT AT NIGHT, PEOPLE!).

The bus system in Galveston sucks rocks. I ended up walking 25 blocks from the Sandpiper to the Post Office.

What’s with the NO GUNS signs all over the Post Office? Sheesh!

The most redeeming thing about Galveston was this one shop on the Strand that had the coolest wooden sailboat models I’ve ever seen. They also had ALL things sailing, all of which I drool liberally over. I could have spent more money there if I had it.

The gift shop next to the Elissa was also wonderful because I found one of the greatest books ever:

Booty: Girl Pirates on the High Seas

I highly recommend it.

I was not in the mood to cook dinner, so I bought a whoppingly big burger and a really yummy turkey club sandwich with chips and a can of soda at Spencer’s Deli #8, right behind the Walgreen’s. All for only $8.00.

Spencer’s Deli #8

If Galveston could get over its nostalgia for its Italian Mafia past and just go ahead and legalize gambling, they could easily become a rival for Las Vegas. Plus, it would probably make the place a lot SAFER, even if that meant there’d be people handing out nudie bar fliers everywhere you walked.

Corpus Christi, TX

Corpus Christi is beautiful. The marina is small and inviting. I wish I could have gone to South Padre Island, but oh well. Business is business.

The view from my balcony during the day. Oohh!! Water. . . .
(I watched many of the sailboats sailing into the marina too, since they had to pass right by the hotel.)

The seawall, looking kinda north towards the Lexington.

The Lexington is there, and I could only see it from a distance. I would have liked to step in it, but oh well.

A walk along the seawall was really pleasant. What is it with Texas and WHATABURGERS? They’re everywhere! I suppose Whataburgers are the Steak ‘N’ Shake of the South. I’m glad they were open 24 hrs, because I got to Corpus Christi pretty late.

“Whataburger By The Bay” (that’s what it said)

I suppose in the summer months this place is teaming with tourists. In the summer, I’m told it is hot as hell, and the sliding door at the Omni Hotel informed me to close the door to my balcony or the AC would turn off automatically. In January, though, it was pleasantly tourist-free and had very nice and cool weather compared to the sleet I encountered in Virginia this month.

The view of downtown from further south on Ocean Blvd.

I found a cute little sheep here.

They have a cat house in Corpus Christi. There were plenty of cats in there, but there were some dogs too. No stool pigeons or sitting ducks, though.

I had to get a picture of the Sailing Center, of course!

A nice shuttle bus driver informed me that the Omni Hotel is actually built on what used to be water, and that Water St. used to be the original shoreline.

If you walk along the seawall, you can see a monument to Selena, that singer that got stabbed to death.

The monument to Selena, the singer.

And if you walk further south, you can see a wooden replica of the Nina. I was told that you have to pay to see the Pinta and the Santa Maria.

The Nina was surprisingly small.

It looked beautiful in the sunset.

If you believe in spirits, then this picture may chill you.

I took several long exposure shots from my balcony, trying to get everything in the frame. That fuzzy whitish dot is not the moon. I have no idea what that is. It was in many of my pictures, but never in the same spot, either in the downtown area, or relative to my camera. I’m only posting this picture because it achieved most of what I wanted to get in the frame, and, well, it does look like the moon is in the shot (but it wasn’t). Later the next day, I was walking around and saw a brochure for a walking tour of downtown. There is a tree downtown where they used to do public hangings. Read from that what you like.

Houston, TX

I like Houston. I especially appreciated that mass transportation there is as easy as it is in the Bay Area of California. There is a bus (the 101) that takes you directly from Houston Hobby Int’l Airport to the downtown area (Hyatt Hotel) for only a DOLLAR. A DOLLAR, folks!

When you’ve been shitting money as much as I have lately for cabs, a DOLLAR to get to a hotel is heaven.

Houston is an interesting place. There are separate centers for SHOPPING and BUSINESS. The business area is where I stayed the night. The shopping area is called the Galleria. I was there for business. Oh well.

Houston has “suburbs.” They have “Pear Land” and “Sugar Land” and “Kingwood.” NONE of which I got to see. I was told the cost of living is pretty good. I didn’t get to buy groceries there, but I’ll take people at their word.

Texas highways are kind of, excuse my French, fucked up. Getting on the on-ramp requires usually navigating across 5 lanes to get in the right one. That is messed up, people.

Otherwise, my experience in Houston was pleasant. I like Texas. And I like Texans.

Cleveland

I like Ohio. Cleveland is a pretty city in my eyes. Compared to stinky San Francisco, Cleveland is gorgeous.

I get really tired of colleagues who can do nothing but rave about how much they wish they could return to California. They are usually very boring people. When they get back to California, all they do is go to bars and drink all the time. (Essentially all they did in the Midwest, anyway. Gee. How exciting.)

I’ve done more in the Midwest than I ever did in California in the 6 years I lived there. I’ve been rockclimbing, skydiving, SCUBA diving, sailing. I haven’t been skiing, but I could have gone, if I’d been so inclined.

People are so nice here. I know my neighbors and my neighbors know me. When I moved to the Midwest, my neighbors came over and brought food. That was really something compared to our neighbors in California who never really introduced themselves.

Do I miss the beach? No. Water’s water. I do my work and when I want to have fun, I can easily fly to the beach. I don’t have to put up with masses of tourists. I can enjoy fireflies and see the leaves change colors instead of turning brown and dropping off.

I’ve seen Yosemite, and it holds nothing over the mountains of China. Sequoia was impressive, but a tree is a tree.

Colorado has far superior skiing.

In other words, California holds nothing for me. And I’m glad my colleagues are going there instead of me. Leaves more residency positions open for me here in the Midwest!

(SO LONG, SUCKERS!)

Italy

I visited Italy back in either 1988 or 1989. It was one of those whirlwind high school tours, where you spend 80% of your time in a bus looking at stuff but not touching.

We landed in Milan, but didn’t get to see any of it.

In Firenze (Florence), we stayed at the Porta Rossa hotel, which I really liked. Hotels we stayed in were not like American hotels. It was sort of like a hostel in that the lobby had a library you could actually use and the rooms were dormitory style, which was a new thing to me, but which meant that the whole experience was kind of like a huge slumber party.

I liked Florence, but we saw mostly the touristy stuff. Museums and shops. I would have liked to have wandered more on my own than being shuttled to and fro like livestock.

There is a large metal pig somewhere in the city. If you toss a coin into this monument, you will guarantee a return to Florence. I don’t believe in those things, naturally, and perhaps that’s why I haven’t returned!

Even though a lot of time was spent on a bus, I really enjoyed that part of it because the views driving down from Florence to Rome were gorgeous. Yellow fields full of bright red poppies. I like that kind of thing.

There was a castle that we stopped at on the way. That was really beautiful.

Rome was also fun, but again, it would have been more fun to go where I wanted to.

Our group leader’s son did just that, and wandered off somewhere around the Coliseum for about 3 hours. His parents were livid, but I don’t blame him. It sucked though that we ended up sitting on some stone steps for hours while they went off to find him.

I got lost in Tivoli, which was kind of nice. Everyone was really helpful, and I got to practice my Italian in full immersion style for a whole 30 minutes before rejoining the herd again.

I am not going to describe everything I saw. What I saw was mostly beautiful.

Venice was terrific for a traffic-hater like me. I visited it just after Ronald Reagan had been there, so everyone told me that the canals had been cleaned up considerably. It was gorgeous and clean. We stayed in a small hotel just off St. Mark’s Plaza.

The street outside our hotel room was so narrow, I could almost reach out of the window and snag some coffee from the guy’s kitchen counter across the street. It was a great place for voyeurs.

Lots of pigeons. At least two of my companions got pooped on.