Houston International Festival

Every year Houston hosts an international festival, which is basically where they close half of downtown off, put up numerous tents, charge you a fortune for food and beer and have themed areas...ie different countries. it was a gloriously hot sunny day, and as ever, my good buddy Randi introduced this to me...she is the best tour guide ever i swear. spent a nice few hours basking in the sun and listening to 'world music'. unfortunately this years 'themed' country was ireland...so as with st patricks day here, everyone claims to be irish or have irish roots, and generally play on all the classic cliches....which actually annoys me a little how people have embraced st patricks day, non irish people i mean...not sure how it caught on but it riles me a little...maybe im just too grumpy, but i belive in supporting your home football team

Texas Wedding

I was fortunate to be invited to my very first Texan wedding by a colleague at work. The weekend was horrible weather wise, with armageddon-esque black clouds and 24 hours worth of tropical rainstorms, but luckily as i got the the venue, the sun came out and it actually became lovely, we even had blue skies...which is a good job as the wedding was an outdoor affair. i also managed to avoid the dancing, so all in all, it was a success

Dinner at La Maison du Parkes...dinner at mine

have finally gotten my house to a presentable and furnished state to have guests. Invited a few close friends for the inauguration dinner

this is my place

Reaching a Segway

Made me smile, but tourist groups now have Segways to transport people around the sights...looks ace fun! God bless america

The Lovland clan

ironically visiting San Antonio that day was my very very good friend Thor, and his wife June and Madelaine, their 7 month old baby...along with Thors entire Norwegian family.

Remember the Alamo!

So you've all heard the phrase, but do you know actually what the Alamo is? Well, a brief history of time, for 13 days in 1836, the Texan army who laid claim to the state of Texas for the US, battled the Mexican army who also claimed Texas to be theirs. Those who fell in the battle include Davy Crockett and James Bowie (of the Bowie-knife fame).

The River Walk

The river that runs through the centre of San Antonio was going to be concreted over during the 1940's during the boom expansion years of Texas - SA used to be more prominant than Houston or Dallas- to make way for more blandness, but local groups protested, long story short, the city relented and decided to celebrate the river rather than destroy it, wha emerged was this magnificent Venice-esque River Walk, which is truly truly stunning. It goes for about 3 miles and is a total joy to wander through, and take in a few restaurants on the way.

Historic San Antonio

Dont get me wrong, San Antonio (the 7th larget city in the US has its bland downtown skyscrapers, yet there is an historic side to the place which attracts 3 millions visitors per year (thank you lonely planet), so dont go thinking that the whole place looks like this, but the good thing about the city is that main tourist spots are walkable...the fore-fathers had some sense of scale at least