I stopped at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, and got some tourist curios. I had been there in 2004, too, but my coffee cup got broken (got a new one). This place is worth the trip if the weather's nice. Long walk up a hill to get to it.
We headed out to Balmorhea (pronounced "Bal-Mo-Ray") state park in west Texas - it has a springfed swimming hole that's amazing - I'll try and do a post on it. Then, because we couldn't get a second night in the "hotel" at the park, we stayed in nearby Pecos, TX.
This is a town of about 10k population that's clearly been through many boom/bust cycles. It's entering a new boom cycle, because the price of oil is high enough to justify getting at the harder-to-reach oil reserves around there. We drove around a took a bunch of pictures, and then increased the color saturation them.
Singapore may be the only shopping-mall-state in existence today. I bet the mall-constitution, after you get past the lengthy section on leasing rates, is brief and rarely requires amending.
It had never occurred to me until now that Houston's Galleria area might one day secede from the city, from Texas, and the United States, but I'll be watching it with suspicion from now on.
This is, without a doubt, the cleanest and lowcrimerate-iest place I've ever been - at first, I was even afraid to jaywalk, but got over that quickly.
But the city keeps its essence of chicken secret safe, and the elixir is nowhere to be found.
This is really relaxing when you're trying to get to the airport to catch a flight. No cows or ox-drawn carts in this particular minute and a half - and at least they're usually moving :)
