Sunday, November 11, 2012

Saturday 10th November- Down town Dallas

The sky was a bit hazy this morning and strong winds have been promised for later today and overnight and, until midday tomorrow, and with some risk of heavy hailstones of the car damaging type, lets see. We tried the Hotel breakfast and not bad really, the Homewood Suites part of Hilton have got a good formula which seems to please many people.
Whilst returning to our room from the breakfast room we noticed a railway track and asked reception if we could get down town by train, she said she thought so and we should go down the road, turn right and take the bus to the DART station which was not to far away. We obediently followed her instruction and found the bus stop which said no buses on Saturday and Sundays and so we kept walking for what eventually turned out to be a mile and half to find the Dart station  DART stands for Dallas Area Rapid Transit and encompasses Trams and buses and all for what appeared to be good prices. As we arrived at the station the train was arriving and so we hurriedly bought two tickets, not quite the same tickets in the rush, and jumped on the Tram and just hoped it would go where we wanted and by pure luck it did.We did ask a guy about the routing but he did not have much of clue and stood studying the map for a few minutes and he then said he thought so, the opinion we had already come to, Oh well.
We arrived after about 40 minutes at the Historic (but the unsafe part of town we had been warned) to try and find the famous square where JFK was assassinated just about 50 years ago.
From the 6th Floor of the Library building JFK was shot
We found the square and took some photos and looked at the famous 'grassy knoll' where rumours still abound that JFK was shot by three gunmen, one from the 6th floor of the Library , one from the grassy knoll and the last from a storm drain which had a good spot to shoot from, but who knows?
We had discovered that there was a tram, free of charge, which runs back and forth from the old part of town up to the better part and so we rode up and back and stopped for a about half an hour for a walk around and an ice cream. Then back to the station to pick up the tram back to Las Colinas and this time we tried a different way back from the station  which was about half the distance compared to getting there.
The free tram
Tonight we are having shrimps to start followed by Lamb Chops a'la Noel and then finishing with some fresh strawberries, boy its tough on the road.


The weather is thought to be poor tomorrow so Jen will probably do some washing  and then perhaps we may go to the cinema.