3 days in Texas. 3 cities.
I’m ambitious–always have been. I’m also passionate, impulsive, and totally cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. So when my husband asked if I wanted to tag along on his work trip to Texas for a few days, I saw the perfect opportunity to promptly ditch him and take off to explore the state whose official motto is “Friendship”–a pretty perplexing description for the “Lone Star” state, no?
Regardless, I do actually have friends in Texas (I guess it’s true!) so I solicited their recommendations, advice, and also a bed here and a shower there. Perhaps not such an obvious oversight after all.
HOW TO: 3 CITIES IN JUST 3 DAYS IN TEXAS
People think I’m nuts. I think people are lazy. And I’d rather be crazy than uninspired any damn day. ⇠Now if those don’t sound like lyrics to a country song, I just don’t know what does.
Seeing three cities in just three days in a state as big as Texas is absolutely possible. Mostly thanks to the fine 18th and 19th century settlers who put three of Texas’s biggest cities relatively close together… for those of us hundreds of years later who aren’t limited to covered wagons for getting around. Kudos, cowboys!
PLAN AHEAD.
- Tune out all naysayers. Don’t let boring people lead you down boring roads to where they live alone in their boring houses. You see, misery loves company. Misery also isn’t afraid to let you know how crazy and irrational you are. Screw misery!
- Rent a car. In Europe it’s easy to travel between cities with their trains and their busses and their cheap cheap flights. But this is America. Land of the free and home of the affordable rental car (that also comes in automatic, by the way). When you land at DFW, hit up the hilarious guys at the E-Z Rent-a-Car booth for the best deals on the only reliable way to hit up three cities in 3 days in Texas.
- Download Waze. Waze is the best GPS app for getting where you need to go in the shortest amount of time. It’s dodges traffic jams, closed roads, tells you where the police are hidden, and comes in voices like the Terminator, Shaq, and “boy band”–almost too hilarious to handle.
THURSDAY // DALLAS
Dallas is not even the biggest city in Texas–did y’all know this? It’s Houston! I thought only astronauts lived there and Yao Ming that one time.
So in case this is your very first stop by My Wanderlusty Life, last week I wrote alll about my one day in Dallas, the place where, contrary to all responsible health notices, you don’t need pants to drink in public. And that is as literal as it gets.
I began my 3 days in Texas here where I flew into DFW via Spirit Airlines, picked up my brand new Toyota Camry from E-Z, and checked in to the Hilton Anatole, the perfect just-off-the-highway, just a couple of miles from downtown hotel.
Dallas has a lot to offer and the absolute best way to do it all in one day is with the Dallas CityPASS. With this booklet you can visit four of Dallas’s top attraction with a savings of 42% (that’s almost half, y’all–and since I’m talking about Dallas, I specifically mean the bottom half).
More on the Dallas CityPASS in this post.
I began my day with a trip to the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden where I spent the morning photographing honeybees, chatting with William Shakespeare during which I had no idea what he was talking about, and trying to hydrate myself through osmosis.
Yes, I know this is not a honeybee.
Bill’s lion spoke more on my level.
After almost two hours at the Arboretum, I headed back downtown and swiped my husband from the curb outside his conference like two teenagers skipping school and headed off to bone. I mean Slow Bone… OK that’s not helping… If you follow me on Instagram you probably saw me story-ing my way around Texas and, more specifically, the leg, thigh, and breast I consumed for lunch. OK, THIS is why Southern food is so sinful. It’s a borderline sexual experience.
I’m talking about lunch at Slow Bone whose slogan is Eat. Pray. Bone. So there ya go.
My husband had such a great time with me at lunch that he decided to skip out on the conference he came all the way to Texas for and spend the rest of the day burnin’ through our CityPASSes with me.
Our next stop was Reunion Tower for views, breeze, and false-alarm strokes. You know how it is.
From the top of Reunion Tower we saw how close Dealey Plaza and the Sixth Floor Museumwere and decided to walk there to save some cash. We also decided I shouldn’t be allowed out in certain public places but that’s beside the point.
At the Sixth Floor Museum we learned all about the JFK assassination, I laughed at his all-too-familiar and mostly indecipherable Boston accent, and tried really hard to get the gory details of his murder that I’d just read in Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Kennedy out of my brain. No such luck.
We went down to Dealey Plaza, checked out the “grassy knoll,” and my husband watched out for traffic while I ran into the middle of the street to take pictures.
From here we raced to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science thinking they closed at 5:00. Well, they usually do but they knew I was coming so they stayed open late. Or… they do this every first Thursday of the month. Potato, Potato. I realize after typing that that it looks like I just wrote ‘potato’ twice. It’s times like these I regret not starting a YouTube channel instead.
This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs peter if it were sliced paper thin.
By this time the sun was beginning to set and I wanted to see what Pioneer Plaza was all about. Once there, my husband and I debated as to whether or not the longhorns were actually life-size or not. It was a nice change from the who’s cleaning up the hairball debate.
To end our fast and fantastic (fastastic?) one day in Dallas, we kicked back with local brews at Deep Ellum Brewing Company and cheesesteaks and pantless-people-watching at Truck Yard.
If none of that made sense to you, start here.
