April 21, 2019: A Day at the Dallas Arboretum
	March 6-25, 2019: Our Spring Trip to Florida
	Return to the Index for 2019

For some time, Prudence has been planning a trip to Houston for the seven of us (she and Ron, Nancy and Karl, Fred and myself, and Guy), with the primary reason being a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts and a major exhibit of Vincent Van Gogh. Fred and I will be driving to San Antonio on April 6th, and the seven of us will travel to Houston on the 7th, returning on the 10th.

Getting to Prudence and Ron's House in San Antonio

You have probably seen an album page where we visit San Antonio, but in case you haven't, I want to show you the route to San Antonio from Dallas and where Prudence and Ron and Guy are located.

On the left-hand map below, you can see the normal route from Dallas down to San Antonio. Not much explanation is necessary; sometimes we take the bypass around Austin, but most times we don't, and the trip to the San Pedro exit in San Antonio is usually four hours plus.

We head north on San Pedro Avenue a couple of miles and then either hang a left on Ashby and a right on Breeden or just a left on French to get to the Ruckmans' house on the northeast corner of Breeden and French.

In case you have not seen them, I have put below first an aerial view of the Ruckmans' house (it is the house on the corner and the garage/apartment building north of it where Guy lives) and a front view of the house (taken in 2010).

We spent a pleasant afternoon with Prudence at her gallery (Art Gallery Prudencia) and than had a nice dinner at the house, joined by Nancy, Karl, and Guy. And we made our plans to leave the next day for Houston.

Getting to Houston

The night before we left, I found out that the crew wanted to go to Houston via Round Top Texas, which is southwest of Brenham, which is wehre Blue Bell Ice Cream comes from. Round Top has an antique fair three or four times a year, and the 7th was the last day of one of these fairs. Round Top has a number of permanent antique shops, but during the fairs, a great many antique dealers come to town and set up temporary tents and stuff to show their inventory. That wouldn't have been a problem, but the weather today was atrocious- almost constant rain all the way to Round Top.

When we got there, in early afternoon, the weather was still bad and apparently most of the visiting vendors had decided to pack up and call it a fair, and most of the permanent shops had closed early due to the dearth of visitors braving the bad weather to come out antique shopping. We did stop at a couple of places that were open, including one huge permanent building that housed a number of permanent and temporary vendors. It was interesting, but none of us purchased anything.

From there, we drove on to Houston (stopping at the first Buc-ee's and I'd ever visited. Buc-ee's is a chain of huge gas stations and stores- both outsize. There are typically fifty or sixty gas pumps and the "convenience" store covers acres and sells just about everything. It was interesting, but I doubt I'll ever stop at another one.

We arrived at the Hotel ZaZa in Houston's museum district about four in the afternoon.

How The Page for our Houston Trip is Organized

We did a lot during our three-day visit to Houston. Not only did we spend most of a day in the Houston Museum of Art and the Van Gogh exhibition, but we also took a half-day tour of the Johnson Space Center south of Houston. We took so many pictures, that putting them all on one page would result in a page that would take way too long to load and might even overwhelm some devices.

So, I am going to break down this trip into seven sections- one for each major attraction we saw during out stay- and create a page for each one. On each of those pages, there will be two or three links. On every page, one of these will will bring you back to the top of this page so that you can continue through the photo album. On all the pages save for the first one, there will be a link to take you to the previous page, and on all the pages save for the last one, there will be a link to take you to the next page. So you can start anywhere you like and use the links to go backward and forward through the list or come back here when you are done.

1	The Cullen Sculpture Garden and Glassell School
2	Hermann Park
3	The McGovern Centennial Gardens
4	The Museum of Fine Arts
5	The Johnson Space Center
6	The Van Gogh Exhibit
7	The ZaZa Hotel and Neighborhood

Start wherever you wish and have fun!

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	April 21, 2019: A Day at the Dallas Arboretum
	March 6-25, 2019: Our Spring Trip to Florida
	Return to the Index for 2019