Galveston

Another vacation! Hurray! This one starts in Houston and ends in San Diego. Mihai flew from Philadelphia earlier in the day and I flew from Romania, through Munchen, arriving at 4 pm.

Houston is just the starting point. It’s where we made a reservation for a Mazda, zoom zoom, like in the commercial, only to find that Hertz didn’t have one. Because we are Gold Members (a perk of making a new account) we could choose any car we wanted from the Gold lane. That proved to be difficult because they only had huge trucks, a Toyota Camri and some Hyundai. We picked the Toyota, black as a raven, and named her Morena. And so we drove in rush hour toward Galveston, the place that came very close to be my first home in USA.

Many years ago, when Mihai wanted to become a psychiatrist, he interviewed here among  fifteen other places. He liked it, but he liked best St. Louis. And since then he wanted to share with me this special place. 

For starters it’s humid and it’s cloudy, but we have a hotel with a corner of sea view, and it’s quiet. Of course the pool is under reconstruction, a recurring theme wherever we travel.

A new day dawns very early for someone who has a jet lag from Romania. We head towards Galveston Island State Park. The ranger asks what we want to do, we have no plans, what is it for us to do for a few hours? The trails are a little bit muddy, he sais, you could drive here, or here, climb into a tower, see some birds, and then, visit the beach side. Good enough for us, only the trails are really muddy or truly flooded. Doesn’t matter, we’re here and we enjoy ourselves.

Blue heron

I'm looking at the pellets thrown by crabs while making their hiding holes.

Sand pellets thrown by crabs.

After we take pictures of everything and more that interests us, we head by car toward the beach side, but somehow we take the wrong right turn and find ourselves into a cul de sac that has five houses for sale, and another two are in the process of being refurbished.  Business that bad? Are we interested? No. Moving on. We take a nap at the hotel.

Later on we want to visit the old Galveston. We start walking by the Opera House where the valets are wearing dress coat, while the entering public is in sneakers. It was built in a time when things were going well, Galveston was a bustling port, several times bigger than Houston. It weathered several hurricanes and different signs show how high the water was. 

Opera House

Moss on a tree

And then we turn aimlessly on streets, finding shelter from rain into antiquities shops, or furniture ones, or selling paintings ones, almost every building has a shop. What seemed to be a feeble rain proves to be a steady one, resolving us to visit by car. Realising that we’ve seen everything that could interest us we stop at a food store, stock up for the next several days and return to the hotel.

We can’t leave without visiting the beach and so we cross the street, climb down the stairs to some red granite boulders barely covered with sand. Further on is more, resembling a real beach, but it is windy, we are tired so we call it a day.

Clouds shaped as flying birds.