Wednesday, January 11, 2012

A big Texas welcome...from a con artist.

Remember how in the last blog post the first lesson learned in Dallas was taxi's are way over priced. Well..lesson number two is con artists are real. And they are good at what they do. Really. It happens. Here's how:
On a random road in Dallas X marks the spot where John Kennedy was assassinated. Well, turns out this X is really hard to find, and as Garett and I tried to find it a man walked up to us. This man was an older black gentleman who talked a million miles an hour in a raspy voice through the side of his mouth. He wore a super casual sweater with a decent blazer over it. So it was weird because he almost looked like a bum...but not. Kind of like an upper class bum, if there's such a thing. He introduced himself as Lamar Griffith and gave us a half an hour spill on the JFK assassination. Not gonna lie I was intrigued by the guy. He had an incredible knowledge about the assassination and had humor so weird you almost wondered if he was drunk/high/just not all there. Lamar Griffith helped us find the X and taught us a ton of things about JFK but when he was done with his spill he claimed he had worked at the memorial for 10 years now and told us he would now take the six dollars we owed and he even threw in there that he takes tips. Flustered Garett and I threw him a twenty. Not sure as to why. I guess we were hoping to get change. Well Lamar thanked us and told us he was going to go get breakfast and walked away. Yes folks, we were conned. I hope you enjoyed your breakfast Lamar Griffith.


Lamar Griffith as he walks away with our twenty bucks.





Dallas is filled with awesome architecture. Both the old and new buildings. Here are some photos...

Dallas Music Hall



Old Mill Inn


I believe this is part of Chase tower.



City Hall



JFK Memorial. And Yes it is just a random 4 walls with a little thing about JFK in the middle.


Old Red Courthouse


Criminal Courthouse from Old Red Courthouse window.



Dallas Holocaust museum


Mcdonald's is even in a cool building! It almost made me want to eat there. Almost.



I really wish I could remember what this building is called.


The Women's Museum






Dallas also has some awesome statues and sculptures. I embarrass Garett with my statue fascination.


Sculpture in Park





Superman got fed up wearing his underwear on the outside of his pants. So he decided to go without either.





Superwoman followed his example. She now goes by "Flash"





Statue of women crying. I'd be crying too if I had water spraying on me like that all day.







JFK




We went to an incredible Cathedral. It was beautiful.










Brilliant.







There are a ton of museums in Dallas. We ended up only going to one. The Holocaust museum. Incredible but Depressing. We should of went to the African American museum. That would have been festive but then again I'm sure it would be depressing too. Maybe next time we'll just stick with the Museum of Bowling.


Holocaust Memorial for the immediate family of the survivors that live in Dallas






Garett and I may or may not have bought matching boots. But, hey, if its a good price and the boot fits then you deal with the consequences even if that means being "matchy, matchy" with your little brother.


Cowboy Boots:)




More boots!






This is our lunch at IronCactus, a TexMex restaurant. It is in my top five favorite meals I have ever eaten in my 19 years of living. It was chicken stuffed with seasoned corn bread mixture topped with a jalapeno cheese sauce. Oh my goodness when I get home my new mission in life is to recreate this meal. Seriously.




We decided to end our day doing baptisms for the dead in Dallas Temple. It seemed like a lovely, unstressful activity to give ourselves a chance to unwind from the crazy day... Wrong. It was the most stressful thing we did all day. Of course it was worth it, but my goodness, trying to get to the temple was like puke flavored jelly beans, a disaster.

First of all I have to say I am extremely impressed with Dallas's public transportation. They have an incredible light rail system that reminds me of the Trax in Salt Lake except the Dallas one is ten times nicer and the people seem more sane. Well, at least I didn't hear anyone talking to themselves, a common occurrence on Trax. So, the problems we had getting to the temple were probably my fault or google maps. Yeah, we'll blame it on google maps.


It started out great! We got to ride on a lovely old trolley. Look at how awesome it is.


The Trolley.




Garett on the trolley.




Me on the trolley.



We then got off the trolley and went to go catch the bus but apparently I had typed the wrong hour in Google Maps so we waited for a bus that had left an hour ago. After discovering this we typed in the correct hour and we were told, by google maps, to go the a light rail station a half a mile away. So we hiked to to station only to be confused because we could not figure out where in the heck the trains even stopped. Come to find out the trains were underground! And the coolest part was to get there we rode on the longest. escalator. ever. It may be something only a Utahn would get excited over but seriously it was awesome! I tried to get a picture but was told it wasn't allowed. Sorry. You're just going to have to believe me when I tell you I swear this escalator went all the way down to Hell.
Once we rode the Hell escalator to the bottom, which was more exciting than a roller coaster for me, we ran and got onto the train. An orange train. It should have been a red train. Gahh!! But luckily it ended up going to the station we needed! Just stressed Garett and I out a little. Its always a little nerve racking being in a huge city you know nothing about and you just have to trust Google maps to get you where you're going.
From that station we had to catch another bus that we hoped went by the temple. We got off at the road suggested by google. And guess what? Nope, the road did not lead to the temple. Yes, it did lead to a gated community. We walked back and forth looking for the temple. I'm sure we walked almost 2 miles. And then..we saw those beautiful spires peaking over million dollar houses. Such a relief. We felt like pioneers.
Pictures do not do this temple justice. It is so gorgeous! Unfortunately we were unable to get any good pictures due to no light.

The temple!!!!




Our excited/Japenese anime faces when we found the temple.






When telling a temple worker that we were backpacking around Dallas she was impressed we were able to make it to the temple and offered us a ride to our hotel. Not going to lie, I was praying the I wouldn't have to figure out the buses to get back to the hotel in the dark. So we were extremely grateful! Thank you Sister!

1 comment:

  1. becca i love reading your posts. they always make me laugh. -allie :)

    ReplyDelete