Downtown Dallas

I like to think of myself as a well rounded guy. I feel comfortable in the wilderness and I feel comfortable in the big city.
Just as I am fascinated with natural things such as big mountains, I am also very interested in the architecture and construction of huge buildings.

Recently, when I had surgery, if that's what we want to call that ablation procedure I had done recently, we had to be at the hospital really early in the morning.
The hospital is located just East of downtown Dallas. So, we got a room in the Magnolia Hotel in downtown Dallas.
Now, I have never been a fan of downtown Dallas or Dallas in general. But, I have to say that I really enjoyed this experience.

First of all, the Magnolia is a pretty nice urban hotel. It is the old Mobil Oil building with the huge lighted Pegasus on top. That building was one of the early old Dallas skyscrapers built in 1922.
I wasn't around back in 1922 but when I was a kid we always drove by downtown Dallas and marveled at the Pegasus and how tall the building was.
Now, it's surrounded by much bigger and taller buildings. But, it's still a landmark as is the Adolphus Hotel located right next door. Our room in the Magnolia overlooked the classically done roof of the Adolphus.

As we did our tourist thing, walking around with the camera taking pictures of the beautiful buildings downtown, I noticed we were being followed.
It wasn't that obvious at first as we were going slowly and stopping to take pictures. But, I kept noticing one particular fella kept hanging around. We would move and he would slowly move behind us kind of keeping pace and not really looking at us directly.
After a while, I approached him and asked him if there was a map available of downtown buildings in Dallas. He was very friendly and finally I asked why he was following us.
Turns out he was working as a security guard for AT&T and he was making sure no pictures were taken of the AT&T buildings which basically surrounded us and our hotel.
He helped us find a map and was really nice, but it was an interesting experience and I briefly felt like a spy. :)



Even though I have lived in Texas my entire life, I had never seen the exact area where JFK was shot back in 1963. As a history buff, that was a fascinating experience in itself and I highly recommend a trip down there.

There is plenty to do in downtown. Plenty of sites to see and plenty of places to eat. The Magnolia Hotel is worth a stay and is reasonable if you reserve a room in the right way. They have a free Happy Hour and free milk and cookies later in the evening.

Only negative is all the panhandlers and assorted beggars hanging around pestering a tourist for money.