4 Days in Houston, Texas, midway to a heart attack..

Well it was interesting, and definitely confirmed all of my Cliches: Cowboy hats, fast food, big cars and even bigger people...especially the kids! It was also great fun catching up with Andre and Angela, who are also over here on a short term delegation from Siemens. We hit the first day off with a mammoth american breakfast in an old fashioned diner and then mosied on uptown to check out the city and the various giant shopping centres, for example The Galleria, which had a big ice rink in the middle. During the next coulpe of days we visited George Ranch, an old-fashioned but well maintained texas ranch, complete with people in old-style attire speaking funny, along with various awesome shopping spots, Galveston, an old but very cute harbourside city and the Kuara Boardwalk, a fairground and seafood lovers delight by the sea. But i have to say the two biggest highlights were by far the Texas Rodeo (biggest in the world) and the Red River Dance Hall Saloon. They were both a REAL taste of Texas culture! The Rodeo consisted of a livestock show, food area, fairground and huuuuuge stadium, where the competitions were held as well as the concert from Clay Walker - big country star, afterwards. We got to see everything from an extravagant recital of the star spangled banner (complete with fireworks, chick standing on a horse doing lap of arena with flag in hand, gospel choir, you know, the usual!) to bull riding (awesome to watch), to a marine being sent to Iraq the next day proposing to his girlfriend live before the crowd. And the food available was just as captivating: fried and meaty is how they like it! Huge turkey legs to eat in the hand (leaves you feeling like a caveman), corndogs and sausage on a stick, and then for dessert there's deepfried everything: oreos, twinkies, cookiedough, oh yeah, and cola and dr. pepper, don't ask me how they deepfried that but we had to taste it....it was gross. The Red River Dance Hall Saloon is apparently the only real place to go out at night in Houston, and was an eye-opener! Looked like the set of a spaghetti western movie filled with people in cowboy hats waltzing (yes waltzing!) to country music. When they weren't doing that they were, of course, linedancing, and yes, we did participate! The drinks (including Margaritas, yum!) were all 75 cents and the security consisted of the local Sheriff and his deputy, who sat at the bar all night and got hit on by just about every chick under 24 in the bar!