Scenes from the weekend

Texas Weekend Trip

Well let me say WOW! I guess I always presumed that Texas is nothing but full of ranches and fields and cowboys and whatever the I saw in those western movies, but take my word for it, it’s not!

• Friday:Let’s start off with the airport. Definitely one of the cleanest and modern looking airports I’ve been to. To me it didn’t feel as big as Nagoya airport but still it was big enough that my mom and I had trouble finding our way to the exit.

Straight from the airport my tita drove us home to her house in Pearland. I paid a lot of attention on the way there. Huge overpasses and huge 4 lane freeways. Mostly pickup trucks and even bigger trucks, but there were still sedans and coupes but less. Yes, I did see a lot of fields, but let me say that on most fields, there were construction sites. Oh and lots of metal and iron sculptures along the highway!

As we neared Pearland, dude there was literally every food chain you could think of…From the long list that I made on my BlackBerry, here are some:

1. Sonic

2. Golden Corral

3. Chic-Fill-A

4. Red Robin

5. Thai Spice

6. Jamba Juice

7. Taco Cabana

8. Whatabuger

9. Five Guys Burger

10. Mongo

11. Mimi’s Cafe

12. Starbucks

13. Carl’s Jr.

and the list keeps going folks!

So, tita’s house, humongous! 11 feet ceilings give off a very nice affect in the house! I had a room to my self! :D Weather outside was not desert hot! It was a warm 80 flat, but 15mph winds actually made it feel cooler.

Near her house, like 6 minutes walking distance, are all those food places listed above^ and the Pearland Town Center. The town center is basically the outlet style shopping center! Stores include, Vans, Forever 21, Hollister, Dillards, Sports Authority, PacSun, American Eagle, Charlotte Russe. Architecture style for almost all the new buildings somewhat resemble that of west coast type of architecture, and I’m talking about the stores, not the architecture of the house. The high 11 feet cielings are actually very helpful in disipating that extra heat you get in the summer.

That evening moms girlfriends took out out to dinner at beautiful Kemah Boardwalk! Honestly wished, Long Beach here on Long Island was more like it! Over at Kemah, there were parlor games everywhere! There was the Silver Bullet roller coaster, a wooden roller coaster which I’m never a fan of, I never got to ride it though -_- And to my stupidity I didn’t bring my Dslr! So all I got are camera pics, which the BlackBerry thank god actually had good shots!

We had dinner at the Aquarium Restaurant. Which caught me off guard bc from the outside the building did look like an aquarium for some reason. Anyways, when you walk in the first thing you see is the massive 50 foot water tank! It’s the second largest in the continent! We were seated almost immediately, a good thing because it was filled in there, not to mention the the Friday night rush! In the main restaurant itself was yet another tank! This one was a 25,000 gallon tank (if I remember correctly). Dude no one even was ordering yet but I asked for the Root Beer float bc damn I was hella thirsty and wouldn’t settle for just water. The restaurant had a very nice upscale feeling, yet a very amiable atmosphere to it, only the best restaurants get the right balance and Aquarium definitely got it right.

I ordered the Seafood Trio which consists of Blackened Tilapia, Volcano Scallops, Coconut Shrimp with a side of roasted veggies and lemon rice with mangoes and tomatoes! Yummm! oh boy it was amazing but dessert…THE BOMB. Instead of showing us the menu again so we could pick which dessert we wanted, our server presented us a tray of all the cakes, and other pastries, which was what got me. I will deff go back to this restaurant whenever I visit Texas. Oh, and did I mention that the place is Zagat rated? Yeah, the place is that good.

• Saturday:Following day, consisted of visiting NASA. Large complex and the tour was very good! We get to visit some buildings including the Mission Control area, the hangar the houses the entire Saturn V Rocket, and also the Astronaut preparatory are (modules and ships inside a hangar in which Astronauts learn how to work in live in them). For lunch we visited another seafood place in Kemah, this time crabs! The restaurant is run and owned by a filipino so our waiter migled here and there with us. Pier 8 if any of you are looking for delish and fresh seafood, I suggest you swing by! Afterwards we drove through Galveston. Honestly, no offense meant to anyone reading this and is from Galveston, but most parts are ugly. Well I guess the battered down houses from storms gave it that unpleasant sight. Though there were areas where the hotels and the beach area was that looked fun! Though typical of beaches here in  the U.S, its not as beautiful as tropical beaches you’d find in the Bahamas or Boracay, but a beach is a beach. After Galveston we headed back home to Pearland, but after some persuading I talked mom into a shopping spree at the Town Center. hehe I didn’t want to go all out since I was worried about making the bags too heavy so I just bought two new shirts from Forever 21 and American Eagle. Oh and the sales tax is lower than new york. Finally before going home tita bought me Carl’s Jr and then another stop at Starbucks, where I bought my usual Grande Green Tea Frappe with 1/2 shot of hazlenut and 1/2 of raspberry. 

• Sunday: Went to church early in the morning. Lots of filipinos in there mang! Saw a pretty girl about 20ish smile at me as she was coming back from Communion and only to find out that she was my cousin. LMAO okay so finally i was introduced to cousins and more titas! haha We went to go eat at Banana Leaf in Chinatown in Houston. It was scrumtious! Amazing Malaysian dishes and our waiter was funny. After lucnh tita, drove us around the Houston Medical Center, which was basically a City of Hospitals. Literally. No joke, the medical center had their own Electric powerplant because it uses that much electricity amongst more than 30+ hospitals. And the Hospitals had 5 star hotels built into them, which shows the international patients, richest amongst the rich! I wanna work there one day…

• Monday:Early breakfast. Took Pics of the house with tita. Headed to airport. HOLY MOTHER SHTBALLS, the gate for my plane was literally at the end of the terminal, I swear it took me and mom around 20 minutes to get there and we even used those parallel escalator thingys for lazy bums that dont like to walk. Then after another 30 minutes of waiting it was announced that the flight as delayed due to maintinance issues with the plane and that we had to walk to another gate to go on a new plane. holy mother,  another 20 min walk and I was sweating bulltets! luckilly I had another shirt in my backpack. Flight was full and trust me even in First Class I felt that it was still crowded! I spent most of the time listening to two albums from mostly kasabian and a bunch of other random crap.

Overall Verdict: Texas is very large. In the course of 4 days I only visited, Pearland, Sugarland, Galveston, and downtown houston. I actually didn’t get to list everywhere and everything I saw during my trip bc this is already painfully long. Texas is on my list to of places to visit again due to the very polite people, all the food places, and the not so cold climate. Would very much love to recommend that you visit Texas! :D