We spent a relaxing weekend in Dallas.  A friend of ours decided to throw himself a 70th birthday party, and he chose to do it at Reunion Tower in Dallas, so to make it easy, we decided to stay at the Hyatt Regency (which coexists with Reunion Tower).  Wolfgang Puck (some of you are familiar with the chef — I’m not) has the new Five Sixty restaurant there, and that restaurant catered our meal — it was delicious.

Since the event was in Dallas (our friend lives in the DC area, but his siblings and many of his friends live in the Dallas area), we took the opportunity to spend Friday evening with the kids.  Our younger granddaughter was available.  The older one is sixteen, and, well, I’m sure most of you remember how very much is going on in your life at sixteen, so she was doing something related to choir — at least that’s what her parents told us.  Maybe she was really out getting drunk and tattooed?  (I’m kidding — not really her style.)

Saturday, we relaxed, had breakfast as a little NY-style diner we could see from our room.  We checked out Union Station (visible from our room) and picked up timetables, etc.  We’re taking the train to and from Chicago in July, and, if we like that trip, may take a few more train trips over the next couple of years.

See the red awning toward the center, bottom of the photo?  Great little restaurant open for breakfast and lunch.  The bottom corner of the Hotel Lawrence?  A very expensive restaurant that we decided didn’t meet our criteria for a quick sandwich and a couple of drinks.  After a walk around the West End shopping district, we found a great little pub with terrific sandwiches and pretty much anything you could want to drink.

Here’s a shot of the Hyatt Regency and Reunion Tower.  Our room was on the 8th floor.

Since Dealey Plaza was just to the right of the photo above, we walked over to check it out.  If you’re not remembering, Dealey Plaza was where President Kennedy was shot.  It’s quite unremarkable in many ways, but I think the takeaway was that, despite being famous for being the location where Kennedy was shot, it’s also a significant landmark for Dallas.  The plaza (or at least part of it) was a WPA project during The Great Depression and commemorated the gateway to Dallas as first being a ferry, then a toll bridge, and then a permanent bridge.

I’ll make one comment from seeing the site first-hand — siting up to the 6th floor window of the Texas Schoolbook Repository building from approximately where the bullet impacted Kennedy, if Oswald hadn’t fired when he did, he’d have lost his window of opportunity to hit his target.  But he’d had plenty of time to sight in on the target and draw a solid bead.

Here’s my shot of the Grassy Knoll:

In some ways, I was more fascinated with Old Red, the original Dallas County Courthouse.

I love the architecture.

With our room overlooking Union Station, we watched three Amtrak trains come and go.  We were particularly interested, because this will be the train we’ll be riding to and from Chicago this summer, and we’ve been trying to find out as much as possible about it.

Overall, it was a nice, relaxing weekend.