Galveston

After seven hours behind an insect-smeared wheel, we finally reached the inviting Seawall road of Galveston Island. To detract from this fine travelogue for a minute; a moment to tell you about G & S . . . Gary had foolishly e-mailed me the previous night that his chosen destination when leaving Austin was south; ending up at, guess where, a Best Western at Galveston! Too good to be true! Having Googled the only likely establishment Linda was told that; "Mrs. Farrant was at this moment just a foot away in the lobby". "SURPRISE!", we shouted down the phone. To cut a long story short we ruined their last night in a holiday paradise by forcing them to go on a very, very final pub crawl. Honestly.

The next morning, hung over yet again from an evening with the now finally departed Farrants (they had to fly out of Texas this day from Houston), we chose to walk the seawall for a few hours and find out what this town looked like in the daylight. Quite a laid back mishmash, evidently. Biker bars sit comfortably next to gay bars while families congregate on the sands just across the Seawall Road. Our hotel is just a step back from the road right next to a cool beach bar called Float. Someone took a small pool and built a bar around it advertising happy hours and bikini contests. Great place. Here's a photo:

And here's another one of our hotel. Nice, isn't it?

You'll see from the picture's vanishing point that Galveston isn't Blackpool, although there is a single pier behind me with roller coasters on it. In fact, I think we just happened to pick the one seawall hotel with the biggest concentration of eateries around it. We walked up the 20-odd blocks the width of the town (it's long, though; around 100 blocks long) to what the guide books describe as the "centre of activity on the island". It is, in a way, but a lot of places were shut (OK, it was a Sunday) and the downtown streets were very quiet. Perhaps the main reason for this was the town's vulnerability to hurricanes. This weekend one passed south of us to hit Eastern Mexico, not far from Laredo. Five years ago, Hurricane Ike swept across the whole island killing 100 people. A hundred years ago a 120 mph hurricane buried everything under 20 feet of water. Not conducive to long term property development, methinks.