Anyone any tips for a base to explore Texas for a potential longish stay? I didn't realise how diverse a region it is.
Cheers, it's only a passing fancy based on something I read. I'm just in one of those mindless pondering moods. Here's a mindless pondering, do you reckon there's anything you and Patty would ever agree on?
My friend has suggested Austin as a good base, I'm having dinner with her tomorrow night, she said she'll give me more info then.
You didn't think somewhere 5 times the size of England would be diverse? Texans are like Yorkshiremen, where they live is the biggest (yes, I know Alaska is bigger but they just count mainland USA) and the best, so plenty in common there. My cousin lives in New York and has been to Texas a few times, both business and pleasure. He likes San Antonio the most. He was surprised to find Dallas Cowboys actually play 20 miles outside of Dallas in a place mot much larger than Hull and the nearby villages in a stadium you can't reach by public transport, or couldn't when he went a couple of years ago. The stadium, which cost over a billion dollars, was funded by putting up local taxes after a public vote was passed. I wonder if that would get passed in Hull.
Sad isn't it? I'd have taken the piss out of Americans showing a similar lack of knowledge. I've never really given it much thought. I just think of dead Presidents and JR Ewing. Bizarrely, the other memory it conjures up is of Viv Nicholls in Spend, spend, spend because she commented on Dallas being a rough hole.
This sprang to mind when I saw this thread. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGF4ibgcHQE [video=youtube;VGF4ibgcHQE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGF4ibgcHQE[/video] Although the BBC banned the song during WW2, apparently they thought the clapping would disrupt the factory workers too much!!
[video=youtube;c2p2XvByYZk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2p2XvByYZk[/video] Never been but I'd definitely keep away from the women.
You're thinking of ****ing off and been a cowboy arent you? I've had that thought since i was a kid, times cracking on so if you're going I'll come too.
There's some great quotes form that film "Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly. When you're a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, "What happened to my twenties?" Your forties, you grow a little pot belly you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother. Your fifties you have a minor surgery. You'll call it a procedure, but it's a surgery. Your sixties you have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway. Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start eating dinner at two, lunch around ten, breakfast the night before. And you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate in soft yogurt and muttering "how come the kids don't call?" By your eighties, you've had a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can't stand but who you call mama. Any questions?
Depends what time of year you're planning a trip. I'd go with Austin as the main base - visits to San Antonio are easy. Just don't expect too much from the Alamo - it's not big and it's not pretty. The Riverwalk in San Antonio is good, and relatively cool if you're there in midsummer. The music scene in Austin is very good. I avoid the coast if possible in July and August - it's just too hot, but Galveston, Corpus Christi and South Padre Island are great places to visit in spring and autumn. Stay away from the Mexican border though - that's bandit (cartel) country down there. If like me you were raised on British beer (Tetley's as well as Hull Brewery) then look for a Shiner Bock - much better than the maiden's water offered by Budweiser, Coors etc. If there's anything else I can point you towards, let me know.
