Farewell Dallas

So my last night in Dallas is with mixed feelings. The hotel did their usual trick again and woke me up with poolside music at 7.00am. I had a pretty crappy experience with Hertz at Dallas Fort Worth Airport but then again I picked up my left hand drive car and have been charging around the streets of Dallas trying not to kill myself or anyone else for the past four hours. And I had a bunch of fun at the Dallas Galleria.

I caught one of the local trains back to the airport. They have excellent public transportation here. There is a local shuttle tram that is free to hop on and off to get around downtown and a free pink bus that does the same. The Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) system is cheap and effecient. It links light rail, buses and heavy rail all ino one seamless exercise. I took a 50 minute train trip back to the airport to pick up the car. The ticket cost $2.50, I could have got an 12 hour unlimited pass for use on the entire DART system for $5.00.

You know how I mentioned that everything is bigger in Texas? Well that includes the airport. Its bigger than the island of Manhattan. It is the third busiest airport in the world by aircraft movements and the ninth busiest in the world by passenger numbers, last year moving approximately 64,000,000 people. The trip to the Rental Car Centre took 10 minutes and it had eleven companies reresented and I was technically still in the airport. The rental place has a multi story car park attached and was about the size of Newxastle airport. I had asked for an American car and was given three options, a Nissan, Toyota or a Chevrolet. I grabbed the Chevrolet and guess what it is? A Holden Cruze, oh well.

Hertz were clearly having a problem. There was a queue of about 30 people waiting to pick up vehicles and two staff serving them. It took over an hour to get to the counter another fifteen minutes to clear up the paperwork, then I had to find the car (which was a good 200 metres away). To amuse myself I spent most of my time making jokes about the car company.

      Q:Why don't people rent cars in Dallas?

      A: Because it hertz (hurts)

      Q: What's it like to rent a car at the airport?

      A: It hertz like hell?

And so it went on. From there I had to get in queue to exit the carpark which requires photo ID and proof of hiring. I was that exhausted from the effort of getting the car I forgot all about driving on the opposite side if the road. 

The people drive like maniacs and at speed. The speed limit right on the highways leading in to downtown is 65 miles per hour and there isn't anyone driving that slowly. Five to ten miles an hour above the signage seems to be the best plan and you have to match it or you will get killed. They dart in and out of lanes with the indicators being more of an afterthought. The traffic lights are horizontal not vertical but the weirdest thing is doing a left hand turn accross traffic but you also need to think your own position on the road. When you go from sitting on the right side to the left your natural instinct out of habit is to position you car too far to the right. Plus looking at the rear vision mirror by glancing up and to your right takes some getting used to.

Finished the afternoon at the Dallas Galleria, which is kind of like a Westfield. It was massive and had an ice rink right in the middle, not what I was expecting.

Finished the night with dinner at Ellen's Southern Kitchen it had excellent food and the owner/chef and mamnager were friendly guys. So its up early tomorrow to hit the road to San Antonio famous for Davey Crockett and The Alamo. Four hours on the highways. What could go wrong?