I can honestly say this trip changed my perception of Dallas. For some reason I did not realize what a large city it is. It's ENORMOUS! And I it was obvious that Dallasites (I'm not sure if that's correct but I am going with it) love a mirrored building. They were everywhere, and mostly in the skyscraper variety, very impressive and nice to look at. Since our conference didn't start until 8:30 everyday I got to take a few early morning walks and check out the city at my own pace.
I had a nice view of the Fountain Building from my hotel room...it was gorgeous!
We had our meeting in Dallas's tallest building, the Bank of America Plaza...on the 69th floor (there are only 72 in the whole building!). The views from here were spectacular!
A gorgeous view of the Trinity River (which was a bit on the full side) and the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.
And another of the Fountain Building (from above it!)
I was amazed by the number of [extremely large] sculptures there were around the city. There were several in the mile or so radius I was in. My favorite was a 30 foot eyeball called, you guessed it The Eye! And yes it is a 30 foot eyeball that looks scarily real.
And it just hangs out in its own park area in the middle of downtown.
Of course you can't go to Dallas and not talk about JFK's assassination. Our hotel was about .5 miles from Dealey Plaza where he was shot and the conference hosts arranged for us to take a tour of the Sixth Floor Museum, formerly known as the Dallas School Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy from the corner window on the 6th floor (which has been left intact and looks just like it would have on November 22, 1963). It had some background on President Kennedy and his family and then it walked you through the events of the day and the aftermath. It finished up with a section on the conspiracy theories that surrounded his death. I found it fascinating. If you're ever in downtown Dallas, it's worth the stop.
The infamous window is the one that is second from the top and the seventh from the left.
Across the street from the Museum you can see the grassy knoll and the exact location the President was killed. It's marked with a white X in the middle of the road. The unceremonious X is because the street he was killed on is still a major artery in downtown Dallas and people drive over it every day.
It was hard to get a picture of it since people were diving over it, but the X is between the black car and the light post in the center lane.
The JFK Memorial was just down the street and was quite impressive as well.
So thank you, Dallas, for showing me a great time. I would love to come back again sometime, maybe next time just for fun!?
I will end this post with a PSA for a lesson that I unfortunately learned the hard way on my trip home:
DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT wear a sparkly shirt to an airport that has body scanners. The scanners will assume the "metal" in your shirt is something other than the thread in your shirt, and in return you will receive a full body pat-down from the agent on duty. It was not my most comfortable moment. However, there was a silver lining. Yes, believe it or not. I can now confirm (since she showed me what the scan looked like) that those scanners only show masses of metal and not "other things" like I have always wondered. You're welcome. And leave your sparkly shirts at home (or at least in your bag because it didn't cause any problems on the way there when it was packed away).
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