An interesting day in Galveston. First of the all, the weather. It seemed like other parts of the state were hit worse than us, with 14 inches of rain in San Antonio. Here, we just had heavy periodic rain, which kept us off the beach.
But the weather wasn’t a totally bad thing. It seems that this weekend is an important one for motorcyclists – the big Lone Star Rally, right here in Galveston. Don’s yoga teacher today said that most locals are packing up and leaving for the weekend while 50,000 cyclists descend on the town.
http://www.galveston.com/lonestarrally/
The weather got so bad later that I guess the bikers were all in the bars, rather than on the roads. Okay by me!
We did go out to lunch, but it was during one of the awful periods. We are on Galveston Island, just west of the seawall. I think the wall is where those crazy reporters stand while broadcasting during hurricanes, for some reason. The wind wasn’t too bad when we were out, but I could definitely feel what it would be like to be here then.
We tried to see The Strand, which is the older part of town. But a humongous Carnival Cruise ship was loading in the harbor, and too many streets were blocked off to make it accessible. Wow, was that ship big! And it was tough trying to navigate in pouring rain through cars unloading thousands of people I was pretty sure I would not want to spend the week with. But I could be wrong.
Other things I couldn’t photograph through all the water: the local Rita’s, which is rated more highly than most restaurants here; the cruise ship itself; and the boardwalk with an amusement park known as Pleasure Pier, which bore an eerie resemblance to Pleasure Island in my Pinocchio book. That place always scared me to death.
We ate at Joe’s Crab Shack, where I was dry enough to photograph the walls. Then home to movies and popcorn. The sun finally came out, and it was beautiful. Tomorrow will of course be gorgeous, and San Antonio will be all scrubbed up for us, I expect. This was actually a good day and a fun insight into a Gulf Coast city. It just has a little too much water!
