Day 28 - Rocketman

Well even though the big city of Houston didn't draw me in, I did manage to see something that Houston is famous for. A perk about being relatively far from downtown itself was the fact that there was a lot of open space around us. And question you may want to ask yourself is, "Why would Houston have all this unused land far from downtown?" Well the answer is this land wasn't actually "unused". The land was on the property of the NASA's Johnson Space Center. It just so happens that the space center was literally across the street from our hotel and so after we checked out of our room, I walked over to the center. Emma and Andy went to go read at Starbucks. I think they got enough space stuff at the Air and Space Museum in Washington. But for any physics major this is the Holy Grail of all jobs. This is where all the magic happens.

Unfortunately it was surprising cold that morning. A little overcast and a bit of a cold breeze. I walked over anyway though and got my ticket for inside. The first building was very large. They had all different kinds of exhibits and model spacecrafts, authentic spacesuits, tons of history involving the different missions such as Apollo and Mercury, and a three story play area for the kids!

Because it was so cold out I decided not to take the tours. Not to mention the shortest one was 90 minutes. But If I am ever in Houston again I will surely get a ticket for one. You get to see so much all around the property.

I met Emma and Andy at Starbucks and we started our drive towards Austin. After a couple of cities of booking hotels we were back to staying at a mutual friend. Jeff Handel went to school with Emma and Andy in Chatham. He moved down to Austin shortly after he graduated and works.

We checked out his apartment and he showed us around the neighborhood. For dinner we knew we had to grab some authentic Tex-Mex cuisine. The restaurant was more of a diner but the food was real good quality. It was delicious! After our first experience with authentic Tex-Mex, Jeff showed us some of the "bars" he goes to around town. While he was driving it didn't seem like we were head downtown, but more so driving around a small neighborhood near the city. It turns out the many of the houses that I saw were actually bars. We headed into a house and it seemed like it was completely gutted and redone. It was really, really cool. We headed to what I assumed would have been the kitchen to find a fully stocked bar. The atmosphere was really nice. It seemed like we were drinking in our own personal living rooms...but weren't. It made me think of the episode of Seinfeld when we find out George likes to watch movies in his friend's places cause it makes it seem like he is actually doing something productive.

Well we didn't stay out too much longer after that. Jeff had a big person job in the morning and wanted to talk about things that we would like to do the next morning.

You could even say we were feeling Austin-tacious

Aramis

Posted in: Timmy