bus trip

I had a bit of a sleep in on Friday morning.
A lot of people on my Contiki went to the JFK museum because they were doing the Dallas Cowboy Stadium Tour at 2pm so wanted to get it over and done with earlier.
As I wasn’t, I went at 11.30am with a few other people.The JFK museum was actually pretty interesting. It was an audio tour and talked all about when Mr Kennedy was president, what the public thought of him and how he was assassinated. The museum is actually where they think he was shot from. And when I say ‘think’ it’s because there’s a few conspiracies around who actually shot him.

I don’t know too much about American presidents (as I live in New Zealand and it’s obviously not a big thing for us) but I learnt that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States and he was assassinated at 12:30 p.m on Friday, November 22nd, 1963, in Dealey Plaza. (Which is where the museum is located)
Kennedy was fatally shot by Lee Harvey Oswald while traveling with his wife Jacqueline in a four-door convertible limousine
Untitled-210 Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally’s wife Nellie were also in the car with them but they weren’t hurt. It happened as Nellie (the First Lady of Texas) turned to President Kennedy, who was sitting behind her, and commented, “Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you,” which President Kennedy acknowledged by replying “No, you certainly can’t.” Those were the last words ever spoken by John F. Kennedy. JFK_Dallas From Houston Street, the presidential limousine made the planned left turn onto Elm Street, allowing it access to the Stemmons Freeway exit. As it turned on Elm, the motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository. Shots were fired at President Kennedy as they continued down Elm Street. About 80% of the witnesses recalled hearing three shots. John-F-Kennedy-Assassination-Reenactment A minority of the witnesses recognized the first gunshot they heard as weapon fire, but there was hardly any reaction to the first shot from a majority of the people in the crowd or those riding in the motorcade.
Many later said they heard what they first thought to be a firecracker, or the exhaust backfire of a vehicle, just after the President started waving.
I was talking to a girl on my tour and she was saying how apparently when this whole thing happened there was a lady taking photos while standing in the grass and when the gunfire happened she didn’t even move and she kept taking photos but to this day they’ve never found her. So that’s a bit suss…

A ten-month investigation from November 1963 to September 1964 by the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone in shooting Kennedy.

It’s worth having a look at the museum as you learn quite a bit about this event.
When I was finished, I went back to the hotel and me and another guy Robert (from Germany) who’s on my Contiki, caught the train to a mall 20 minutes away. I was desperate to find some cowboy boots still because we were heading to the Rodeo that night.Unfortunately I never got any 😦 I just couldn’t find any and we didn’t have that much time there before we had to get back to the hotel for the rodeo.
I did however see a Mac make up show going on briefly, ate a yummy sandwich and bought a mac foundation brush.When we got back to the hotel, I quickly got ready and the people who didn’t go to the stadium (me and 6 others) hopped on the bus to pick up the others who were finished with the stadium tour.
The bus was so hot when we got on!! I was sitting there fanning myself for so long while I sweated off half my make up. American Summer’s aye.When we got to the rodeo, we had about 2 hours in Fort Worth before the rodeo started so 12 of us all went and got dinner somewhere and visited a candy store haha.The rodeo started about 8pm with some bull riding which was fun to watch. We also watched horse riders lasso a baby calve and quickly tie 3 of its legs together. Whoever was the quickest basically won. It sounds horrible and I did feel quite bad watching as well all these poor animals.
But then i have to remember that they’ve been doing stuff like this for years, and I can’t really kick up a fuss coming into their country 😯 at least they untied them really quickly.When the rodeo was over, we all took the bus back to Dallas.
At the beginning I was keen to go our but I hadn’t started drinking and then wasn’t really feeling it by the time we got back to the hotel.
Instead, Paige, Marisa and I went in search for a grocery store for some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. It was however closed so we walked to TGIFS and had some really yummy dessert. TGIF
I look very pale in that above picture coz of the flash on my camera haha!
Ben came and joined us later on as he had F all to do and hanging out with girls drinking water is heaps better than hanging out with his room mate Dave.

Think I ended up going to sleep around 1am this morning so I had lots of naps on the bus 😴😴
X

Next up Memphis! (Where I’m currently on the bus too)

This morning I got a bit of a sleep in. We had the optional activity of doing a hot air balloon ride in Albuquerque but I was too scared/too poor to do it haha.
Those people who were doing it had to be at the bus by 6.20am so I’m glad it wasn’t me! 😴😴 Swimming_Pool-_Evening When I eventually got up (9.45am departure) I washed my hair and tried to vigorously scrub the fake tan off my legs.
I love staying at these hotels though. It’s nice to use the towels they provide instead of your own. There’s nothing worse than a damp smelly towel in your bag for half the trip!
We stayed at the Best Western in Albuquerque (picture above) and it was pretty good.
All the places we’ve stayed on Contiki so far have been much better than I imagined. I thought we’d be staying in little 2* motels or something but I’ve been pleasantly surprised.

Once on the bus, I had some skittles for breakfast and played some music on my iPod on the way to the capital of New Mexico, Santa Fe.
We did stop off at this cow boy type shop to buy some shirts and boots for the rodeo we have coming up in Texas.

The shoes were soo expensive though. Like $100-$700 so I didn’t buy any (i also have absolutely no room in my bag for any more shoes)
I did however buy a brown checkered shirt for the rodeo which I now think may be a bit too small for me.Around lunch time we stopped off in Santa Fe which is another ‘cute’ town I can add to my list. It’s the fourth largest city in the state but it felt like the nicest small town.

Santa_Fe_street_scene

When we were wondering around, we all got fajitas from this fajita stall. I wasn’t sure about the chicken in mine so i picked a lot of it out and gave it to the birds. I’m very funny when it comes to meat…It has to be thoroughly cooked or I won’t eat it. That’s why I never eat steak, and whenever I have chicken I have to see if it’s white all the way through. You’d think I had a bad case of food-poisoning in the past or something but I’m actually just weird.

After feeding myself and the birds, I went across the road and looked in a few shops (bought myself a magnet) and then went to Haagen Dazs and got myself a small caramel type sundae which made me very full and sleepy on the bus.
I’m like a baby when it comes to food! Eat then sleep, eat then sleep… zzz

Once on the bus, it was onwards to Amarillo, Texas!
We had a stop off at a gas station on the way for gas and snacks. These little stop offs are going to make me fat (not to mention my poor food choices, refer back to me eating SKittle for Breakfast and Ice-cream for lunch. Ahh…)
The gas stations just sell candy and chocolate and hot dogs and all things bad for you.
This time I defiantly didn’t buy anything.We played a few games on the bus (in between me watching Orange Is the New Black on my tablet) One game we had to transfer a ball between 2 teams but you couldn’t use your hands.
The other one we had to unwrap a star burst wearing gloves.

Half way through the drive we had a surprise stop off at the Cadillac Ranch to spray paint some Cadillac’s.
The Cadillac ranch isn’t actually a ranch, it’s a public art installation and sculpture created in 1974 by architects Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels. They were part of this art group called Ant Farm who put these Cadillac’s in the ground as a display for everyone. Suddenly people started spray painting the Cadillac’s so the guys made it so anyone can just come and spray paint them.
The cars are visible from the highway, and you can get to them though private land by driving along a frontage road and entering the pasture by walking through an unlocked gate.

Cadillac-Ranch-1

Our tour guide provided us with spray cans so everyone went crazy spraying the Cadillac’s and writing our names on them. big-texan-motel When we finally got to our Motel, The Big Texan (which was so cool by the way) we had about half an hour to get ready for dinner at the Big Steak Ranch.At the restaurant they do a Steak Challenge so a couple of people signed up for that from Contiki. You have to eat a 2kg (72oz) piece of steak as well as a side of shrimp, a bread roll, some salad and a baked potato. SONY DSC

Unfortunately the boys didn’t finish it in time so had to pay the $70 (well all of us on Contiki helped them pay as it was for our entertainment also)
There was another guy who did it afterwards from the public and finished everything BUT half of the potato. He just couldn’t do it and had to go and throw up. 😷After we’d finished our meals, it was off to the dance floor to break out some line dancing, play some beer pong and drink a few drinks.
Safe to say I got a bit drunk last night and ended up falling asleep on top of the drier in the laundry room.
Anything is comfortable to sleep on when you drink I swear.
I did make it to my bed around 5am and then got up before 8.30am to catch the bus to Dallas.
*sigh* all in the day of being on Contiki.
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