I had different thoughts to the reality of Houston. We are downtown amongst the big buildings but it is nothing like say even Austin's downtown. The downtown area here seems to shut down at 5:00pm. When we got here yesterday, we even saw signs advertising a tunnel system which we asked the valet guys about and they said it's ok, but they shut down around 4:00-5:00pm. We asked them for a recommendation and they suggested a mall about 8 miles away. Again, it was ok, but not like the high end mall I would have wanted to see.
My knee has been bothering me since Sunday and I was having a hard time just walking with Wife. It hurt so bad that the mall had a Target and I tried the different bands for support but none would fit. Wife suggested I stay at Target and she would walk to the other end of the mall where we parked. Watching them leaving me behind made me a little panicky and I said forget that. I yelled at them to wait for me and I hobbled along with them. We made it to the car, eventually. From the mall, I noticed an Academy on the other side of the highway and we stopped there so I could get a wrap of some kind for my leg. None of the pricey ones worked, my leg is too fat. I finally found a thin wrap that is focused on the patella. It seemed to help and we got out of there. A sales guy was helping me, even throwing in that his wife was a doctor and he suggested Tiger Balm, that it would definitely get hot. I've tried Ben Gay and I was expecting something like that but more intense. I rubbed a bunch around the knee and felt nothing. This was in the morning, and after I washed my hands, I washed my face to go eat breakfast downstairs and that stuff got in my eyes, man that was a little rough, but my leg never felt anything.
We got to the hotel around 9:00pm, couldn't figure anything better, so we ordered a couple pizzas, and swam in the pool until 10:00pm. The pizza must have gotten there at 10:15pm and we went up to the room to eat and call it a night. It is freaking nice to have the pool up high, ours was on the fourth floor, so no one from the street could bother us.
I imagined the downtown area to be kind of dirty, it being bigger than Austin, I kind of expected it to be more smelly of urine and all those fun things 20-somethings find appealing of a lively party district. Honestly, it is quite dead at night. A lady at the mall in one of the stores was telling us that everything including the tunnel area all shuts down around 6:00pm. It only exists for business and there is no live music like in Austin. I even had the conversation with Wife that we pulled into Houston around 4:00pm and didn't see a black man until around 7:00pm and he was driving a city bus. All the people walking around the downtown area seemed to be white. All the valet people and people working in the hotel seemed to be middle eastern or Hispanic.
No comments:
Post a Comment