Thursday morning, with the help of a cab and two Southwest flights (with a change in St. Louis), I arrived in Houston's Hobby Airport. The hotel looked like it couldn't be much more than a mile away, and I didn't have a ton of luggage, so I walked. Which was fine, though the heat and humidity left me a little sweaty. Fortunately I had time to unpack and take a quick shower before Sara got back to the hotel room and I was wisked off to the bed and breakfast where the wedding was to take place the next day.
We sat around and chatted with relatives. There was some wedding rehearsal activity which we didn't have any involvement with, and then we all went to dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant.
The next morning we had the hotel breakfast and then visited the Menil Collection, where I was reminded of Roberto Matta, and encountered Max Ernst's Pierrot Mon Ami. A google "feeling lucky" search for "Pierrot Mon Ami Ernst", as of that day, takes you to information about casting number eight of the series of eight (the museum had number four), which could be yours for a measly 192 thousand. Sara would hear none of it, but I think it'd be way more interesting than, say, any Ann Arbor house you could buy for that amount.
After that we had lunch at a nearby café, then visited the Rothko Chapel and the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum, both within a few blocks. I've got nothing against Rothko, I guess, and the building was nice enough, but I'm offended at the idea of kneeling before his paintings. Even if you think he's great, he's not *that* great.
The wedding and reception that night went well. Guests included Sara's family, the new English inlaws, and friends from the lab where the couple work. This was the best part of the trip, but I don't really have anything to say about it.
Saturday we did some more tourist stuff around Houston--saw some gardens, walked around downtown a little, then ended up with an outdoor concert, "Accordian Kings 2006", where we saw "Cedryl Ballou & the Zydeco Trendsetters", "Joel Guzman & Aztex featuring Sarah Fox", and C.J. Chenier. It took a while for me to warm up to it--maybe I just didn't like the first band much--but in the end I had a good time.
We had to get up before 6am in the next morning to make our flight home, which is a little early for us, but everything went fine.
My main impression of Houston was of car traffic. Our hotel was well out of town and just off a major (3-4 lanes each way plus a 2-lane access road on each side) freeway, which seemed to always be full of high-speed bumper-to-bumper traffic. The roar of the freeway was constant. Going anywhere required a long ride on it. I probably got a skewed view of the place staying where we did--maybe it's different if you stay downtown--but it didn't seem like the kind of place I could live happily.
Sara had warned me that since Southwest didn't have reserved seats, you had to stand in line a long time to get a good seat. But the seats were fine (legroom seemed better than average), and I think I could have boarded at the last minute without being unhappy.