Dallas with Big Sister

Well my sister's 6 week visit was coming to a close and it was hard to tell her how fantastic and wonderful it was to spend time with her. I couldn't tell her too much personally because I would start crying and goodbyes between us always gets teary. We don't spend time together often and certainly not for 6 week blocks on a holiday. I hope she reads this here and knows how much I love her, how much I enjoyed being with her, that I miss her dearly and more so as we both get older, and that I am so lucky to have her as my sister. You see, I've got tears in my eyes now as I type this. Love you big sister. xx

To finish her American adventure, we flew to Dallas to see the Fort Worth cowboy city and do the JFK experience in downtown Elm St, Dallas. Now, it's been a fairly constant 6 weeks of travelling and sight-seeing so we were all dragging the chain. But, go hard or go home I say. We'd been out the night before to see Margaret Cho so it was a little bit late getting home. We had a 7am flight out of DC so it was an early start at about 4.30am. Well, things didn't quite go to plan. Here's my post off Facebook.

Woke up to my sister shaking me, it's 5.10am, shit I totally missed the 4.30am alarm, she's dressed and ready to roll. Meant to get Uber at 5.15 to airport. Quick math, yep, can still do this and make plane. Deb still sound asleep. Jumped up to shower, a bit too quick, woah, feeling woozy, yep gonna faint (I am a professional fainter so I know the drill). Laid down on the bathroom floor in my birthday suit ready for it. Woke up to panic stations, again to my sister yelling at me and Deb yelling 911. Both were wondering WTF happened? Thankfully 911 not called, all good, just too quick and overtired. Aborted the flight plan, slept all morning and managed to get the later flight to DALLAS tonight. Pity we missed our Fort Worth tour but it's JFK day tomorrow.

So yes, I've fainted a few times during my years and while Deb is a little used to it, she gets scared and hates it. Fair enough. Apparently my eyes were wide open and I was pretty stiff. Deb wasn't sure if I was breathing!! They reckon I was out for about 5 minutes but that can't be right? Anyway, a good sleep fixed it but I'm annoyed that we missed our flight and the tour of Fort Worth. My sister and I had a good laugh about it that night in bed as we shared a hotel room - some sisters never grow up.

We only had one day in Dallas and I was familiar with the JFK stuff as Deb and I had been there in April. Dallas post

We slept in a little and enjoyed a nice breakfast. Took the train to Dallas and found out quickly that the Texas State Fair was on (runs for 3 weeks). Wow, I would love to have gone but we just couldn't squeeze it in. 

In Dallas, we took the JFK Trolley tour which was a one hour trolley drive along the route JFK drove and the route Lee Harvey Oswald took after the shooting. We drove past the spot where Dallas Police Officer Tippet was shot and the movie theatre that Oswald was finally captured. We also drove past the police station where Jack Ruby shot Oswald. The whole trip was narrated to explain what was happening moment by moment. It's a great way to live the experience and prepare you for the museum. 

The Sixth Floor Museum is the JFK assassination museum on the sixth floor of the former School Book Depository. This museum is excellent and you do a self guided audio tour around the museum. It continues to be one of, if not THE, most interesting mystery of the modern day. Who shot JFK? Why? I enjoyed reading all the exhibits again and since my last visit, I've watched a documentary called The Lost Bullet which was done in 2013 and  tries to answer what happened to the first bullet fired at JFK. It re-evaluates the famous Zapruder film that shows the murder of JFK and states that Zapruder stopped filming and missed the first shot fired which changes the timeline of the bullets fired making it possible that the first bullet hit a traffic signal. The documentary also features other home movies taken on the day. It's worth watch if you're a JFK fan or conspiracy theorist cause this blows it all away. 

 

 

The photo of JFK and Jackie above is a collage of tiny photos of each other. So JFKs photo is made up of tiny tiny photos of the Jackie photo and vice versa. Very cool.

We had an early dinner and tried to get to bed early as it was going to be another early start as we both had 7am flights out of Dallas. I was going back to DC and my sister was heading back to Australia. Thankfully I heard all THREE alarms, woke early, didn't faint and we both made our flights. We took an Uber and had to get out at different terminals which was a good thing as it made for a quick huggy goodbye in the car and minimised tears and sobbing. I hate goodbyes. I slept all the way to DC and the house felt and still feels very empty without her here. Cricket misses her too and both dogs looked for her for a few days when we come home in the car...wondering where the other person was? I was pretty tired for a few days and caught up slowly on things at home and got back into routine.

 Forgot to mention that I went to a chef presentation by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh. They are very famous chefs and a friend invited me to go (my sister came also). They have released a new book called SWEET which is chock full of awesome baking recipes. I've already made a Spice Cake which was pretty good for a first attempt. I'll be making a few others as they are pretty special.

There are Ottolenghi bakeries in London and they are super popular. I'd never heard of either of them but I enjoyed listening to them talk and learning more about the culinary field.

It's Halloween and the houses are decorating their yards and verandahs with scary stuff and pumpkins. I've got into it a little bit this year but putting our Amish pumpkins outside and hanging some pumpkin and fairy lights on the verandah (porch for the US folks). I had hoped to carve the big pumpkin with my sister but we didn't get time. I'm thinking of having a last minute attempt over the weekend and I'm sure it will be a messy job and look even more evil than planned. 

I finally got to my first cooking class - it was a knife skills class for 3 hours. We cut up lots of vegetables for stir fry and I learnt some good tricks. The class was a mixed skill level and I was cringing inside as I watched others cutting with their knives. Now I'm no expert but some people were a little wobbly for my comfort. I ended up turning away and not looking because I was scared they were going to cut a finger off and then I'd faint at the sight of blood - cause you now know I'm a professional fainter right !!  We then had a raw whole chicken and they taught us how to cut a chicken into pieces. I admit I was a little squeamish at pulling the chicken bits but it was a great technique to know. One lady had to leave the class cause she couldn't cope with it - poor luv. We finished the lesson by cooking a chicken stir fry and it was pretty nice. This cooking school offers volunteer roles so I am keen to volunteer to help with classes in order to learn more things without doing a class but they also give you a discount if you volunteer for a certain number of classes. 

And the cooler weather has hit us after a long delayed summer. We're searching the drawers for winter running gear and waiting for daylight savings to end next weekend (2 Nov). But winter will be here soon and I wonder if it will be a super cold snow winter after a pretty hot summer.

I took this photo of Cricket as he slept while I ironed. He's such a beautiful boy. The dogs are getting back into regular walks again now that the travel season is over so we are all on the path to eating better and getting fitter. Love these two.

More of DC Museums

I continued my sister's adventure by taking her to see:

• the African American Museum
• the Holocaust Museum
• the National Archives
• the National Cathedral and afternoon tea
• Mt Vernon, the home of President George Washington
• Margaret Cho live !!!

The African American Museum has been opened almost one year and you have to book tickets at least 3 months in advance. I decided to rock up in the morning and try my luck at getting one of the limited tix handed out on the day. I find out that the these tix are given out at 1pm but the lady in charge was very kind and gave me two tix that were extras from another group. Great !! So we got in first thing but it was busy, crowded and very slow moving. We spent the entire day inside including lunch. There was even a queue to get into the gift shop at the end of the day and we weren't able to get into there. The museum was excellent. There was an extensive history of slavery dating back to the 1600's. The exhibits were confronting, sad, informative and left me shaking my head and asking why, what's wrong with people, how can people do this to another human being? Like all the museums here, more time is needed but we did get a good look around and enjoyed the upper levels that were focussed on music and culture and other modern achievements. This is a very important museum and it will be well attended for many years to come.

 

 

We visited the Holocaust museum and it was not as busy as my first visit earlier this year. I was able to read more and absorb more of the information. 

Again, another horrific part of history that I cannot comprehend. We were shocked at the collection of shoes and human hair and found ourselves googling that night to learn a few more things about Hitler and his sick obsessions.

 

The National Archives contains copies of pretty much every significant document in US history. In particular, I was completely thrilled to finally see the original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights - signed !! There is also a copy of the 1297 Magna Carta of which only 4 copies exist in the world include one in Parliament House Canberra. We took the one hour tour through the Archives which was very interesting but I guess it's what you can't see is what's amazing. The digital records of everything, and I mean everything is all there and you can see it if you apply and visit etc. Just incredible. We couldn't take any photos inside but seeing those documents was something I've always wanted to see. Big tick there.

The Washington National Cathedral, the Cathedral Church of St Peter and St Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington DC. It's the 2nd largest church building int he US and the 4th tallest structure in DC. Construction started in 1907 and the church was progressively built in stages from the alter area towards the entrance. The stained glass windows are gorgeous and the tower at the top has spectacular views of DC. We took a one hour tour of the cathedral which concluded with afternoon tea at the top of the tower. This was a really nice way to end the tour. 

 

 

Mt. Vernon was the plantation house of George Washington, the first President of the United States, and his wife, Martha Dandridge Custis Washington. It's about 45 min drive away and is a good day out. The entry fee includes a tour of the house which was super busy the day we were there. I went a few months ago with friends and there were small groups taken through the house with a guide who gave a good explanation as you went through. However, this time was just one long conga line of ants and the guides around the house said a few things as you passed by them. I was disappointed with this but that's what busy periods are like I guess. The plantation has a small farm with some animals and George and Martha's crypts can be also be seen. The museum was extensive and it was interesting to learn about George the man. He's a pretty impressive guy and no wonder he became the first President.

 

To finish on a much lighter note, albeit crude and rude, Deb and I had bought tix for all of us to see Margaret Cho live. Margaret is a US (Korean born) comedian that we stumbled upon about 13 years ago. 

She is so funny, and we are always in tears within minutes of listening to her. The benefits of being in the US is getting to see such amazing acts like Maraget Cho so we did not miss the chance to see her live. It was a fantastic hour of laughs including her support act. 


This was a great way to wrap up my sister's time in Washington DC as we were headed out to Dallas the next day where we'd do final look at JFK stuff before she heading home to Australia.

Amish Visit and Gettysburg

 In Pennsylvania, there is a place called Lancaster and Intercourse (yes, you read right). This is known for its Amish communities and is a nice place to drive around and explore the markets, stalls and covered bridges. We started at the Lancaster Markets which was not as big as we'd hoped but it was full of food, fresh produce and baked goods. We bought some whoopee pies and few other pastries and then headed off to the Bird in the Hand markets a bit further away. This was big more bigger with more arts and craft and home made foods. We bought some jams and had some lunch before visiting an Amish Farmhouse. This is an old house that tourists visit to learn about Amish culture both in the house and on the farm. 

It was a fun hour or so and my sister go to do some pumpkin chunkin'. This is where you put a small pumpkin in a slingshot and fling it out to the paddock hoping to get it into this big bucket. We nearly wet ourselves laughing as her three 'chucks' were just so funny. Deb was keen to see some covered bridges so she googled some bridges and we were driving all over the countryside to see these bridges. They are nice but, after two, I'd seen enough (poor Deb). But we continued to a third bridge and maybe a fourth, I can't remember. I guess we all remember the romance movie Bridges Over Madison County and the covered bridges - sadly none of these bridges had any of the charm of those bridges.

We tried to have dinner in town before heading back to DC but about 5000 other people had the same idea. This place is popular and the mass of tour buses didn't help our chances of getting a feed at an Amish restaurant.

 

 

There were lots of roadside farm stalls and we stopped at one selling pumpkins for Halloween. I've never seen so many different pumpkins. There was a young girl with her mum and given we were Australians who have no idea about pumpkins, I sought the advice of the young girl. She recommended the best pumpkin to carve, the ugliest ones and how to display them. 

I had $20 and we spent $19 so I told her the spare $1 was a tip for her expert advice. We loaded the car up and felt just a little bit more in the swing of things having bought our first Halloween pumpkins.

 

My sister continued her Civil War history lesson by visiting Gettysburg, also in Pennsylvania.  I've previously written about Gettysburg back in Sept 2016 so I won't rewrite it here. The quick link is: Gettysburg Sept 2016

It was a dreary drizzling rain day but it set a good mood for the adventure. I tried to book a guide to jump in our car and drive us around the battlefield but, they were booked out. So instead, Plan B was to buy the audio guide CD and drive around the battlefields ourselves. Before we headed out to explore, we checked out the museum and the cyclorama (360 degree diorama of the battlefields). I've seen this before but I love this stuff and it was great to see it again and learn a bit more. My sister did not know the size of the battlefields so it was interesting to hear her initial thoughts on the battle after the museum. So we put the CD on and off we went. There were about 16 stops and the CD was excellent. It talked to us as we drove around and then gave us a great explanation to the attraction stops.

 

 

At the end of the day, we went to the Gettysburg National Soldiers Cemetery which is the cemetery where Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg Address and thousands of civil war soldiers are buried. It was an information overflow day but my sister certainly grasped the key players in the battle, the significance of the battle and enjoyed the day.

New York again

A trip to the US would not be complete without a visit to New York. This was my 4th visit so I was able to ensure my sister got to see as much as possible in the 4 days we were there. While we visited the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Tower, 9-11 memorial and museum and Central Park, I was able to do a few new things that I hadn't done before. 

We also took a walking tour to Brooklyn, crossed the bridge both ways and had a yummy feed down Chinatown.

Brooklyn Bridge

Flatiron

We took a cruise out to Liberty Island to see the Statue of Liberty up close. She still impresses me every time I see her. The statue is 93m high including the pedestal and the island she stands is bloody huge too - I didn't realise how big it was. It was cool to walk around Liberty and see her up close. The weather was perfect. The statue was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the United States and is recognized as a universal symbol of freedom and democracy. The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on October 28, 1886. It was designated as a National Monument in 1924. Wiki tells us that....The Statue of Liberty is a figure of a robed woman representing Libertas, a Roman Goddess. She holds a torch above her head with her right hand, and in her left hand carries a tabula ansata inscribed in Roman numerals with "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (July 4, 1776), the date of the US Declaration of Independence. A broken chain lies at her feet. The statue became an icon of freedom and of the United States, and was a welcoming sight to immigrants arriving from abroad. That statue is green because it's cast of bronze which has oxidised, colouring it green.

 

I also got to visit the USS Intrepid aircraft carrier museum. Wow, it was loaded with aircraft on the deck and full of exhibits underneath. The really really really cool thing I wanted to see was the Concorde. It sits on the rear of the deck and the only way to look inside is take the one hour tour. It was awesome. The Concorde is truly an impressive aircraft with a list of records and achievements. I loved the tour, the information they told us and seeing the cockpit was incredible. We got to sit in the aircraft and listen to the guide talk about the history and facts about the aircraft. I loved the stories and flying the Concorde was an absolute experience, an expensive one at that.

This aircraft was Alpha Delta, a British owned aircraft. Only the British and French had them. The French have white seats inside !! I have extracted this from the Intrepid website... 

The Concorde is a product of Anglo-French cooperation. When the Concorde entered Air France and British Airways transatlantic service in 1976, it was the only operational supersonic passenger transport in the world. With a crew of nine, the Concorde could fly at 1,350 mph (2,150 kph) at an altitude of 60,000 ft (18,181 m), high enough for its 100 passengers to see the curvature of the earth. This aircraft, serial no. 100-010 (G-BOAD), first flew on August 25, 1976. Concordes crossed the Atlantic Ocean in under three hours, or less than half the time of any other jetliner flying that route even today. Protests from environmentalists prevented its supersonic use over the United States and limited airport operation. A crash upon takeoff in July 2000 grounded the fleet until 2001. The Concorde flew VIP passengers until 2003, when both airlines retired their fleets from service. This airplane is on loan from British Airways.

I loved seeing the cockpit and saw the speedo that reaches MACH 2 (twice the speed of sound). You won't see that in the commercial aircraft today.

I also got some memorable Concorde photos such as the airframe plate above the door and the flashy plaque as you board the plane.

I loved seeing this aircraft and my sister liked it too so it wasn't just me being nerdy. We also looked around the Space Shuttle Discovery which was the first orbiter of the Space Shuttle system. Rolled out on September 17, 1976, it was built for NASA as part of the Space Shuttle program to perform atmospheric test flights after being launched from a modified Boeing 747. It was constructed without meninges or a functional heat shield, and was therefore not capable of spaceflight. I have seen the Atlantis down at Kennedy Space Centre and now Enterprise. Hopefully I'll see the Discovery at the Smithsonian Air Space museum at Dulles airport here over the winter. We also crawled in the submarine USS Growler, a guided missile submarine. Love submarines and my sister had never been on one or seen one so she was happy. Loving this high tech stuff - a real engineers playground.

I also took my sister to see the Broadway smash theatre show 'Book of Mormon'. Deb and I saw this a few years ago and it is an incredibly funny show targeted at the mormons. It is well worth seeing so get your tix and check it out. You won't regret it.

The night before we got the bus to New York, was the Aussie Rules Football grand final at home. My beloved Richmond Tigers were in the final for the first time in about 32 years. I had to be there at least in spirit. Deb got the techo TV stuff sorted so I could watch it live streaming, and all I had to do was get up about 1.30am and pray the Tigers would win. I put my footy shorts on and watched them take the lead early. This was good footy and I made myself a hot Milo (Aussie chocolate powder) to feel a bit more at home. But, with much encouragement from my Facebook friends, I put a 4n20 pie in the oven and enjoyed eating it as the Tigers stretched their lead. I was so glad I watched the game - they won and won fantastically. I had a little tear in my eye and was so proud to be a Tigers fan. Go the yellow and black !!

 


We returned home from New York exhausted and a well earned rest day next. But not for long as there were more things to see so we back on the sightseeing trail in no time.