New York, New York

After a 2 hour delay, resulting in me sitting in the plane out on the DFW runway until my butt went numb, the flight finally took off for New York.

It took a little over 3 hours to get into La Guadia airport in NY. As our plane made the approach for landing, I got treated to a very spectacular night view of the Big Apple. What can I say. It was a unique place. I guess after spending so many months in the open spaces of Dallas, the closely packed clusters of light down below was somewhat a shock to the system. Not only was this a densely populated place, it also stretched for miles and miles in all directions.

Good o' Spikey was in town so we caught up and he gave me a whirlwind tour of NY. He first introduced me to the different gangs in NY - Chinese gang, and the Italian gang.

Oh alright, he was not in the mafia or connected to any gangs as such - I was merely referring to NY's Chinatown and Little Italy. We went to La Bella Farrara for cannolis and coffees (Spike said it makes the best dessert in town and that cannoli WAS good - see bottom right picture).



Then we proceeded pass the NYSE where I posed for a quick photo with Mr. G Washington.


A walk around the block further downtown was the famous Broad Street Bull. I had to wrestle the beast for a photo. Then we were off to Battery park, located almost at the bottom of Manhattan. It was sunset and the view was breath-taking, with lady Liberty standing in the distance holding her forever burning light.



A quick ferry ride on the Stanten Island ferry allowed us to get a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline at night. At this point, we were getting a bit peckish, so we got some famous NY style pizza.


Now that the stomachs were satisfied, we took a nice stroll back into midtown to see Time Square. It reminded me a bit of a busy intersection right outside of the Shibuya station in Japan. There were plenty of neons of broadway show billboards, ads for new cable shows and of course, the much recognised Cup-A-Soup Noodles and the Coca-Cola signs.

We spent some quality time inside the biggest ToysRUs I have ever seen - complete with its own giant ferries wheels inside! Gosh I couldn't even begin to imagine how crazy kids could get going inside that store.

So long pilgrims...

Well that's it for Texas! It is finally time to leave this place I called "home" for 2 months. I must say, it has been fun and the people I met there have been wonderful to me.

So here is the "Texas" Chinese Cowgirl signing out. Hey all'ya chic'lins out there, ya wach awut d'ere fore ya-self.

Next stop: The "Big Apple"

The King, Cute Cowboys and Corny Dogs

The State Fair of Texas is a bit like our Melbourne Show, except very much bigger. It runs for a good 3 weeks and boost the largest ferries wheel in all of America (they probably say the world too, but I won't go that far).

As you would expect, there were plenty of games to play and win prizes from, beers to drink and Texan favourites such as the corny dog, smoked turket legs and curly fries. There were also chocolate dipped key-lime pie and this year's show food: Fried peanut butter jelly sandwich (sorry guys, I was looking for it, but at the end of the day, I still couldn't find the stall that sold it).

For the kiddies, there were plenty to see. The Peewee round-up had little kids hopping along on their stick horses and cows, doing their own version of the "8 seconds" rodeoes. There were also amusing shows like the piglet race, where 4 piglets actually run around a wire fence track to dash for their prize at the finishing line - oreo biscuits.

The most impressive would be the bird show. It is not just talking parrots and budgies doing tricks (but there was a very talented parrot who can actually sing 7 different songs from start to end). There were eagles, kingfisher, doves and exotic parrots. They had eagles flying from the carts of the Texas Star (that's the giant ferries wheel) to the stage, swooping down just above the crowd.

But wait there is more - The Corny Dog Eating Competition. If you don't know what an corny dog is, let me explain. It is basically a sausage on a stick, with a 6-7mm thick coat of corn flour batter deep fried (of course it is deep fried, what do you expect? It is Texas we are talking about!). The competition is to eat as many corny dog as it is possible within 10 minutes. Last year's champion ate 15. His wife came second and ate 12.

There were 15 competitors this year - most of them were... ok... quite "built" but the defending champion was this 70 something year old guy who was quite small and slim. You wouldn't have picked him for being the bottomless pit that he was!! And guess what, he won again, this time holding down 19 corny dogs. Amazing.

There was also a miniature trains garden, an autoshow, an exhabit of Elvis memorabilias for the fans, a parade and a lightshow to finish the night off. All pretty good!

I see trees of green, red roses too...

I went to the Dallas Arboretum last weekend and it was such a beautiful place. There were many themes to different parts of the garden, each with its own unique charm.

The flowers were blooming...



Little animals were out to play...

One part of the garden was set up as early Texan Settlements with miniture size replica of cottages and cabins...

And to mark the start of Fall, there was also a pumpkin patch set up in the picnic area. It was a fine sunny afternoon and many families were in the garden enjoying a picnic or two. So there was this gorgeous field of warm glowing orange with the cutiest kids running around...

How about this for crazy weather?

Well I'd never thought I would see this, but here it is. The 5 day forecast for Dallas this week:

High Low
Wed 91 ° 58 °
Thur 64 ° 50 ° (this is like 10C°!!)
Fri 74 ° 50 °
Sat 77 ° 57 °
Sun 80 ° 63 °

I guess summer is about to be over (FINALLY!!) - just when I am about to leave town too.

Keep Austin Weird

That's the slogan I keep on seeing around Austin, Texas's official state capital. That, and "Hook 'em horns".


"Hook 'em horns" is referring to the longhorn cattles in Texas, the very recognizable "horn" hand sign and the "Texas Longhorn" football team at the University of Texas in Austin.

College football is taken very seriously in the US, the college games get just as much air-play and attention on TV as the professional games. In fact since college football season started a few weeks ago, there is a noticeable drop in traffic around night time on the street - lots of people are either at home watching the game, or with their "footy mates" at sports bar watching the games on the big screens.

Seeing I was right there, I decided to check out the UT myself. It was massive - pretty much it's own suburb! There is a full size football stadium within the grounds, complete with its own merchandise souvenior shop and ticket office.

"Keeping Austin Weird" is originally in reference to places and people that are eccentric in Austin. They even have an official website on this.
http://www.keepingaustinwerid.com

There are weird places like the junk garden and the polka-dot lawn, and wierd people such as a cross-dressing homeless guy and the world's oldest boy band. If only I knew about this earlier!

Polkadot lawn and its owner Beth Thom (pictures from the keepingaustinweird site)

For the more conventional tourists, there are historical buildings such as the governor's mansion and the State Capitol of Texas. The State Capitol of Texas is like our parliament building.

While I was there, the county festival was also on so 6th street in downtown Austin was blocked off and there were food (really weird ones, but always deep fried of course), arts and craft stalls, rides for kids and live music stages dotted along the street and lots of people out. Great fun (if only it wasn't so hot!!)

1. Lone Star arts 2. Ceramic chilli wind charms 3. metal artworks

Check this out - photo shaved into curls then fried!

I had some trouble working out which plate matched up to which menu item!