It was a leisurely start to the day – I haven’t been to bed that late in years! We took the Mustang north of Dallas to Arlington to have a tour of the Dallas Cowboys Football Stadium. It was about thirty minutes drive, and we stopped for breakfast on the way. Well, that is to say we tried to stop for breakfast. But in a country where every other place is an eatery, we couldn’t seem to find anywhere that served breakfast. We tried a place called Boomer Jacks – looked OK. I ordered a chicken sandwich (it was noon by this time – we didn’t start very early) which turned out to be a chicken burger with fries. Not the healthy start to the day that I was planning!
We arrived at the impressive stadium and bought our tickets for the VIP tour – it goes every thirty minutes and costs $27 each. The stadium is just over three years old, and is amazing. It seats around 80,000 people, but they sell standing tickets that can make it up to about 110,000. The standing areas are not that big, so how they get that many people in there I don’t know. And I don’t think that many of them will be able to see. There are cars on show in the stadium, and fountains that do a jig when the Cowboys score. But they weren’t working today. There is a massive screen hanging down from the roof, that I can’t remember how big it is, but it is the biggest in the world. The stadium is the biggest dome in the world – there is not one pillar in the way of any seat. There is a retractable roof – and yes, you’ve guessed it, it is the biggest and quickest retractable roof in the world. It is an amazing structure. We went into the “club” seats, which have access to a private club for the day as well as having a seat. Very posh – not a bit like our football stadiums. Then we went into the private suites that are for hire on ten or twenty year leases – absolutely the seats that I would like to have if I went to a game. I bet they are a pound or two to buy!
Then we went into the locker rooms. The cheerleaders have their own locker room, with the current years team all marked up with their names and photographs on each locker. The Dallas Cowboys have their own locker room with each locker costing in the region of $1000. Again, each locker is named so everyone has their own. It looks more like a bedroom than a football locker room. The away team, apparently, doesn’t have anywhere near such a nice room. We then went out onto the pitch – not real grass but something that can be rolled up and stored when the stadium is used for something else. Each different game needs a different pitch, so even if it is college football rather than NFL they have to roll up the pitch and put another one down. Was a bit special being on the pitch though – I will have to now watch a Dallas Cowboys game.
We went from there back to Downtown Dallas. The guide book I had bought had a self guided walking tour of downtown in, so we decided to do that this afternoon. It started at the Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK from the sixth floor. The sixth floor has actually been turned into a museum now, called the Sixth Floor Museum funnily enough. We bought tickets to go in - $16 each – and got the audio equipment as it was about an hour of background, the actual shooting, and what happened next.
It was really interesting. The pictures and films that they had set the scene, the window that he shot through was set up as it was then, and it went through all the events as they happened. Unless, of course, you believe the conspiracy theories that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t working on his own. Who knows? We left the museum and walked to the Grassy Knoll that the conspiracy theorists said one of the shots came from, and all around the area. The window that he was shot from is just above Paul's left ear - not the top floor the one below it. There are two white crosses on the road – one for each of the shots where he was shot. From there we walked past Dealy Plaza, named after the man that founded the Dallas Morning News. From there we could see a huge tower that housed a revolving restaurant. I think we might try that tonight!
Our walk took about two hours, and took us past a mixture of old and new buildings. There is a really bizarre memorial for John F Kennedy – a lump of concrete in a box like structure with openings on two sides. Not pretty at all – but is called a “brooding structure”. Hmm. We then passed a building that houses the Conspiracy Museum – but it looks as if the museum has closed. Perhaps they have given up! There is “the worlds largest ensemble of bronze steers and horseback riders”, but you could actually give this one a miss. Reminds me of Milton Keynes! One of the tallest buildings in Dallas is here – 72 stories of Bank of America. Loads of lovely glass bank buildings around here – can’t be that bad in the banking industry at present then.
There are train tracks on some of the roads. The DART transportation system has trains on several routes that seems to be very efficient. We touched the Arts District and the West End during the walk. Fountain Place is one of the tallest buildings in Dallas, that has “an oasis of bubbling fountains” in it’s grounds. But it must be national no fountain day today, as none of them were working either. Bizarre. We passed an area that was full of weird little black birds – they were everywhere on the electricity lines and in the trees. All squawking and making a fuss! Just after this, every person we saw happened to be black, and an awful lot of them. I think we might have just wandered into the wrong part of the city! No problem – it wasn’t long before we found where we had parked the car. And it was still in one piece!
A quick change at the hotel after the concierge made us reservations for the 560 restaurant by Wolfgang Puck – the revolving restaurant that we had seen earlier. I googled him when we got back – a very famous chef with a lot of fine dining restaurants. We took a cab – Paul was having withdrawal symptoms from wine, and I didn’t think I would be able to see over the great big hump in the bonnet of the car. The elevator whisked us up the fifty floors very quickly – one side was glass so the view was great even on the way up. We met a banker in the lift – so I knew that the menu was likely to be quite costly at this point! We were there then, so hey ho.
The food was absolutely delightful – one of the best meals I have ever had. The flavours were amazing – and the service was excellent. A good choice for our last night in Dallas!
No comments:
Post a Comment