Dos Dias en Dallas

I had two full days in Dallas and they were full of seeing new things, random events, lots of history and of course, yummy good and friends.

Roni and I started the day with heading downtown (with lots of issues parking....) so we could go to the Sixth Floor Museum. The history of the JFK assassination was absolutely fascinating. There was so much caught on film, both still and video yet at the same time, there are still so many questions about the truth. It was fitting that just a few days before, we had listened to "Assassins" while driving. It was a very moving museum but at the same time, it was hard to navigate through all the people that were there. I appreciated the audio guide but at the same time, the audio repeated much of what the on the boards. Also, no pictures were allowed, but I snuck one in. No way I was paying all that money and not get at least one picture :)

view from the 6th Floor

the Grassy Knoll

After the Museum, we walked around Dealy Plaza and then across to the JFK Memorial, which was a few steps away from Bryan's cabin. John Neely Bryan was the founder of Dallas and later ended up in an insane asylum, which is telling when you see his picture. Our final stop for the day was the Dallas Museum, which was housed in the Old Courthouse, a grand building with some beautiful staircases inside.

The museum tracked the history of the city of Dallas, which included some comparison to what was going on in Dallas County, Texas and the United States. There was a lot of fun stuff there, including JR Ewing's hat, old bicycles and sporting equipment and stories about the history of Dallas from pre-Mexican-American Revolution up until the present time.

Roni and I met up with Beth that evening, Roni took off for WF and Beth and I went to her church. They meet in a movie theatre, which was like when I went with her to Paradox, and the sermon was wonderful, really vibrant and enlightening. From there, we went to La Madeleine, a cute little French restaurant for dinner- the food was delicious. Tomato soup, pasta salad and a yummy chicken and bacon sandwich. Just hit the spot after not eating much all day.

The following day, after a slight snafu with the public transportation of Dallas, I took a slightly shady bus back to the downtown area to go to the Holocaust Museum. it was pretty small but had an interesting tactic of highlighting three events that took place on the same day in 1943: the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Bermuda Conference and Train Twenty from Belgium. The last one was a story I was unfamiliar with- three Belgian resistance fighters, using a pistol and some hurricane lamps and a bicycle, managed to save 215 Jews on the twentieth train to leave Belgium for the camps. The other two, I was familiar with, especially the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising- one of my favorite stories of the Holocaust. There was also a beautiful memorial at the end with the eternal flame with black reflective stone, kind of like the Vietnam Memorial.

There was also a small children's exhibit that held many works of art from Terezin, the "model" ghetto. Each painting or drawing went along with a poem, including "I Never Saw Another Butterfly", which is one of the more famous ones.

Post-museum, I met up with Andrea and because it was raining hard, we went to the mall to grab some lunch- my sweet potato fries and grilled chicken sandwich was again, delicious. Andrea and I had a good while to catch up, as well as wander the mall and see what odd things the Dallas mall had to offer. There was also a aunt out to Buffalo Exchange and a few more thrift stores to see the crazy things people wear, including shirts with cats on it, fringed jackets, outrageous kimonos and more. That night, we met up with Beth at Starbucks for more chatting before getting to bed for my early morning flight up back to Boise.

It was a great end to a long trip- thanks friends!