Day 45 - Houston: Tunnels, Rothko Chapel, Montrose, San Jacinto Battleground

Houston has an extensive underground tunnel system. They are in the basement of the city and they go all over the downtown. The tunnels are made of tiled hallways with artificial lights and they are lined with small fast food places, barbers, jewelry shops and occasionally by a gym. Security guards, lawyers, public officers, they all go down for lunch break and then reemerge through elevators or escalators to the foyer of a bank or a shopping mall inside one of the many shining skyscrapers downtown. Only a few brave souls walk in between buildings on the surface. I imagine in the summer this tunnel system gets used a lot.

We reemerge by Alley Theater...

The Montrose area of Houston is an elegant residential neighborhood, I assume for students and university professors and their families. It reminds me of Palo Alto in California.

We went to visit the Rothko Chapel which contains on its walls fourteen black but color-hued paintings by Mark Rothko, an American abstract expressionist.

Inside I recognized religious elements according to my interpretation from my life experience. I saw the trinity, the crossing of the naves and the four evangelists, Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, the choir, where the panel has a raised and taller frame at the bottom, and the cupola. Everything is  perfectly symmetrical which gives serenity to the eye, but it is also a dark place with the large black panels enhancing the gravitas of the place. Photos were not allowed. 

In the garden, the sculpture, Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk stands by a reflecting pool, dedicated to Martin Luther King. We sat on a bench outside. It had a very peaceful feeling, and it felt good after all the hectic travelling.  John and Dominique de Menil were the founders and commissioners of this beautiful place.

In the Montrose neighborhood...

We drove through Rice University...

It was early in the day and so we decided to go and see the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site. Here the Texans, led by general Sam Houston, in a surprise attack, won their last battle to achieve independence against the Mexican armed forces led by general Santa Ana on April 20, 1836. In  1936, the monument construction started. It's an imposing column with a nine-pointed star at the very top, facing a large rectangular pond. The star sculpture can be seen as a star from any direction and symbolizes the Lone Star Republic. Texans love this star so much, that you can see it in every home, on every building, even on the walkways. Like in one of the funniest episodes of the TV comedy Portlandia, 'put a bird on it', here is 'put a star on it' 😂

Each side of the monument has words engraved on it, describing the battle and who, when and why it was fought. In the 'who', the Italians are included.
Bill had an epiphany about California, which maybe would have not been able to get its independence if it wasn't for this battle.
Then we got to hypothesizing about California and Texas if they stayed with Mexico...Slavery would not have happened in this territory...no Civil War?...Union against Mexico? Mexico would be ginormous... All the major movies would be in Spanish...😂

...and Italy 😊

Patriotic murals on the refinery's petroleum tanks

Bad picture of Houston Skyline

Day 44 - Houston: NASA

Our plan today - visit the NASA Space Center in Houston - the reality, we left too late, noon, and scrambled to see all the exhibits :/ We didn't realize that this weekend is Presidents Day, so a lot of people were out seeing the sites. The Johnson Space Center tram line was an hour long, and then after the hour visit we waited to get back to the main center, so about half of our stay was used up. Still we saw many very cool things and several movies playing in various theaters in the Space Center.

After learning how astronauts sleep (at all angles), eat (packaged food), drink (their own filtered urine!), exercise (2 hours per day), I decided that I'm glad I'm not an astronaut! Plus there are a lot of things that can go wrong, with possibly deadly outcomes. We saw a film about an Italian astronaut, Luca Parmitano, that almost drowned on a space walk because his spacesuit's water-cooled liner had a leak :( Anyways I'm really glad some people are doing this amazing and adventurous job for us!

Entrance with space shuttle atop Boeing 747

Johnson Space Center building, collegiate style campus

Inside the old Apollo testing area

Apollo test computers, a whopping total of 1MB of data! :)

I wonder what the test "urine dump nozzle" button does?

Data archive for Apollo, no flash drives back then!

Open space shuttle image

The back of an intact Apollo rocket, never used

Francesca touching a real moon rock!

Hello my precious! (big meteorite)

A Robonaut (it may happen...)

Toilet like that used on the International Space Station (ISS)

Picture of an ISS mission with an Italian astronaut (Luca Parmitano) who almost died on a space walk due to a space suit malfunction (the near drowning incident)

Samantha Cristoforetti, Italian astronaut with longest time in space record until 2017 (when another female astronaut broke the record)

Top of Apollo rocket with command module

Side view of Apollo rocket

Day 43 - Galveston to Houston

Before leaving, we wanted to maximize our time in beautiful Galveston. We took a short hike along the beach and returned via the famous seawall.

another of my artistic shots with the fog 😉😂😀

Bill is by the wall

Unfortunately we had to move. We wished we could have stayed longer. 

The USA RV Resort Lake Cove is clean, on a small pond. We have nice views. Most of the residents are contractors, working for the oil industry.

We drove a short distance to Houston. On the way we stopped in East Downtown Houston at an intersection with amazing murals by the 8th Wonder Brewery

 

 

We drove around the city and it looks like a lot has been rebuilt since hurricane Harvey.

We took a stroll in the Cullen Sculpture Garden near the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. There were bronze sculptures from Miro, Rodin, Matisse, Marini, and more. The egg is by an Indian artist, Anish Kapoor.

they all go into the egg and don't come out 

from the top of the terrace



Cistern Tour

We never had a tour of a city drinking water reservoir so this was a change for us, the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern on Sabine street. The tour docent tells you more than you ever wanted to know about the Houston water history, but then we do this...

We had a deafening echo of a good 17 seconds! Awesome!

It would have been fun to come back when they had the light show together with the art work installed at the bottom of the cistern, which were a bunch of Styrofoam white cubes that were floating around. The mirror effect of the water with the columns made the space look even bigger.

Nearby the cistern, there was a skateboard park.