Best long haul flight ever.

May have something to do with one Temaz and 1/2 restavit.

Yep that’s a cocktail.

But a necessary one. 

My Doctor of 35 years did look at me oddly when I asked for sleeping tablets.

I’ve never asked before.

He gave me four.

Ok Leeton, a bit over cautious, but could work.

And did. 

Long haul international flights are a bit spacier than a Jetstar Christchurch to Melbourne flight I must say. But even for me, at 5’2”, the leg area was quite cramped.

Poor MoD stuck in the middle.

Beside him a lovely young 18 year old named Molly who was pretty close to MoD’s height of 6’2”.

Turns out Molly had a four year scholarship to play water polo at Salem West Virginia.  First time she had flown on her own.

We took her under our wing, of course, which made the time go nice and easily. 

Except for the woman behind me who decided to start talking. Like nonstop. 

At 4am NZ time. Until 6.20. NZ time.

Then she put her headphones on and shut up.

What the????

MoD swears she was Australian. 

Her partner never seemed to say a word.  Although every time I turned around he seemed to paying wrapt attention to her computer screen. Maybe she was reading it out to him. Maybe she was paraphrasing the movie they were watching. Maybe she was just ferken rude and inconsiderate. 

So, yes, there were a number of viscous glares pointed in her direction.

I’m not one of those who can say politely ‘Would you mind shutting the ‘F’ up’.

I just glared.

And glared. 

I really should be more assertive. Customs awaited us so I was saving my assertive side.

That was a waste. Best USA customs ever.

Straight through, no issues. Nice relaxed customs guy, chatty.

Unlike Aus and NZ, you don’t go through a further screening after picking up your luggage. We were out pretty quick.

Decided to catch the bus into the city.  Good move given the Ride Share line was probably 500 metres. And that ain’t no exaggeration.

Buses here cost a flat $1.25 (USD) wherever you go. 

We had 2 x $1 notes but no coins. Luckily a Good Samaritan at the bus stop gave us 50c. In return she gained the only thing we could give her. Two Cookie Time Cookies we had saved from the plane.

When I say save? Well I don’t really mean that. 

We ate SOOOO much en-route. Couldn’t fit those two cookies in. Luckily. Two Koru Clubs, two well fed flights. 

When we got to Houston (6pm Saturday) and checked into our (very nice) hotel, we ventured to a lovely little Mexican restaurant – Irma South West – and had another meal. 

I forgot that meals here begin with big baskets of something, usually bread, but in this case two large bowls of corn chips.  And salsa. And guacamole. Then tacos. 

Turns out within a 24 hour period I essentially had 6 large meals.

Top that with a few margaritas and turns out this body doesn’t quite cope with that sort of torture.

It was a very slow start today.

Poor MoD. 

We are staying downtown Houston which is pretty interesting. 

Hot, humid. 34 today. Huge thunderstorm and torrential rain during the day. Then hot, humid again. Orlando weather. I loved it. MoD not so much.

Poor MoD. 

We headed out to find a Starbucks – my usual USA reliable coffee choice.

Wandered through Discovery Green, a downtown park which offers free yoga classes, movie nights and toddler story times. It has a playground, spray fountain and mist tree. There are climbing walls, open air reading rooms and you can borrow balls or games.

Unfortunately not much happening there today, the city was quite dead this Sunday. 

We will be interested to see what downtown looks like tomorrow. 

The roads here are often made of concrete which makes it a noisy place even with minimal traffic. 

The inner city roads are 4 lanes each, so everything is quite spread out and big.

Interestingly we didn’t see all the huge tanks we normally did, most of the cars were similar to what we are used too, and we even saw a few Teslars. 

More interestingly, not a lot of cowboy boots or Stetson hats. In fact we only saw one ‘cowboy’ type. On the bus.

Not the Texas I expected from all those movies I have seen.

The people here are really lovely and friendly. 

Starbucks was in a hotel foyer so I sat down on a comfy couch while the man of the house stood in line (for quite some time) to indulge my passion for a single shot soy latte. 

Of course, I found a wallet. Damn.

Everywhere I go, I either find a wallet or a credit card. Sometimes it’s easy to find the owner, sometimes not. I was thinking possibly the latter in Houston. 

Fortunately a guy came back realising he had dropped it so I was off the hook. 

After coffee we decided to take a bus to the famous Gerald D Hines Waterfall Park, a star Houston attraction, and The Galleria, the biggest shopping mall in Texas. 

This time we ubered……only to find the waterfall park not operational. 

Elsa, our Uber driver, who has lived here all her life, said she had never seen it not flowing. 

Elsa had been an early primary school teacher for 23 years but after 4 bouts of Covid she decided it was a dirty job and she would rather do something which didn’t threaten her health. 

So she became an Uber driver. Go figure!

Not your day MoD, first a rather complicated start, then no water park!

Oh well, off we trotted to The Galleria. 

Spanning 2.4 million square feet of space and 400 stores and restaurants, two high rise hotels and 3 office towers, it’s, well, BIG.

And it has an ice skating rink.

We wandered in at the high end. 

All the fancy totally overpriced shops. 

My first visit to a Jimmy Choo. 

Sorry, I may have 100 pair of shoes, but JC are damn over-rated. 

I did find a pair of heels just like mine for a measly $650USD. Mine were $69AUD.

My first Reuben sandwich. 

From there we wandered back to the hotel, walking the 6.5km this time.

On the way, we noticed a number of police cars parked in front of the ‘Exotic Cabaret’.

I wondered aloud what might be happening there.

MoD laughed and said there will be a donut shop close by. 

He always says that. 

We looked up.

Right again MoD, Voodoo Doughnut. Right there. In Pink.

Back to the hotel, and off to bed, Monday awaits.