Howdy from Houston, TX

Howdy Y’all, we made it to Houston, TX.  We got here about 5pm on Sunday night.  We checked into our hostel, and lucky for us, this time there was a private room available, so no bunk beds.  Once we got situated, we hopped onto the metro and went downtown.  We walked around a little bit to get our bearings, and we ended up finding the Houston Aquarium, which was awesome.   They had an amazing exhibit of underwater creatures including electric eels, piranha, and coral reef fish.  We saw Nemo and Dori’s families swimming around the coral reef.  It was pretty cool.  At the end of the exhibit when we thought, wow this place is awesome…it got even better.  At the end was a beautiful and rare white tiger.  At somewhere between 400 to 600 lbs, this thing was huge.  Below are some awesome pictures of it.  It was so cool to see up close.

After we finished the inside exhibit, we went up stairs to the restaurant to have dinner and wine, out on the balcony, overlooking the city.  It was very good food, and seeing the city all lit up was really pretty. After dinner we went on the farris wheel, and saw the city from the top. Although we did not feel that high up, as all the buildings were still towering over us, it was still really cool.

We made our way back to the hostel, and went to bed, so we could wake up the next morning and go to the Johnson Space Center.  When we got there we went on the NASA Tram Tour first.  This went around all of NASA, and the buildings in which the current scientists, and astronauts work.  We got to go into the “Historical Mission Control” room, from the movie Apollo 13.  This room was where the words “Houston, we have a problem!” and “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” were first heard.  We also went into the NASA training center, where all the training a preparation for space flight takes place.  This building houses all the simulators and everything, which was really cool to see.  There were actually people working down there as well.  The last stop was the Rocket Park, where we saw the actually rocket and space ship from the Apollo missions.  It was bigger than you could imagine.  It was crazy, and Billy was running around taking pictures.  He was more excited than all the little kids on the tour.  It was funny.  After the tram tour we went into the museum portion where we saw moon rocks, lunar soil, and replicas of a lot of space equipment.  Billy got to try a simulator which simulated the feeling of navigating a spaceship in frictionless environment.  It was pretty cool. 

Below are some pictures from Houston.  Now, it’s on to our next stop, San Antonio, TX.