Suneson Scenes: Honeymoon #27

Old Fashioned.
Old-timey.
Throw-back.
Retro.

Why way back when we were married, there was no internet - there was nothing digital! We had to address individual paper envelopes and send invitation through the US Mail and pay 14 cents a stamp per envelope! And we paid a photographer who took photos of the event with film that had to be developed in chemicals and the pictures would not be ready for a 6 weeks after the event!

Times have changed. But for a lark, we celebrated our 27th honeymoon with an old fashion flair; a train ride into the big city and spent two days walking around downtown Dallas enjoying some old sites, new attractions and the company of one another. I made reservations for the Adolphus Hotel www.hoteladolphus.com and a later dinner at the five-diamond French Room.

Our trip to celebrate the past began on Friday morning at the Garland train station where we waited with one piece of luggage to catch a ride on the Blue Line to the Akard Street Station and then the 4 block walk to the Adolphus Hotel. While dressed in short-sleeves and light weight clothing, we could feel the chilly breeze raising goose bumps on our skin - or was their another reason? Typical of a Texas spring, by the time we finished lunch the north breeze had turned and come up from the Gulf of Mexico to the south and it was now humid and warm. The night ended with a thunderstorm and an inch of rain.

We checked in the Adolphus, built in the early 20th Century by Adolphus Bush of the St. Louis brewery fortune to link St. Louis (then the preeminent American Mid-West city) with the the rising fortunes of cotton and oil emerging city of Dallas, Texas. It is an opulent hotel and the French Room, worthy of Louis XIV, has maintained the highest rating for decades. We checked in and confirmed our dinner reservations, and were gently reminded of the dress code for dining in the French Room; no denim or athletic shoes, gentlemen must be attired in a dress jacket [neck ties have recently been removed from the requirements]. I assured the concierge we would meet or exceed the standards.

Adolphus Hotel on Commerce Street

Adolphus Lobby

After leaving our bag in our room on the 15th floor, we then strolled out to explore for lunch. We ended up at the Iron Cactus (Mexican cuisine) in Pegasus Plaza behind the Magnolia building [Magnolia was the predecessor to Mobil Oil and HQ'ed in Dallas; Magnolia Oil's symbol was a red Pegasus flying horse from Greek mythology].

Dining al fresco in Pegasus Plaza - of quartz it's such a nice day

Atop the Magnolia building is a Red Pegasus that was once the defining landmark of Dallas.

Red Pegasus
Flying over the
Magnolia Building
Downtown Dallas

I was told by the geologist who hired me for my first professional job, that his dad used to take the family for a fried chicken picnic dinner on the levee of the Trinity River on the outskirts of Dallas, and there were many other doing the same. And when the sun set and it became dark enough, the Magnolia Building Pegasus would be lit up red to the delight of all the folks watching from the river bank. And once Pegasus was lit, then it was time for the kids to go home and go to bed. We stayed up beyond the Pegasus lighting that night for a late dinner.

After lunch it was a hike through the downtown canyon to the newly opened Perot Museum of Science. This new addition to Dallas is so popular, one has to get reservations with the time of permitted entry printed on the tickets. The earliest we could get in was 2 in the afternoon that Friday. With the 3 hours of allotted time, we chose to visit the Minerals and Energy floor and of course the dinosaur exhibit. It has been years since our last lab practical exam in Mineralogy, but we challenged each other to identify what was in the display cases before looking at the identification key; is is spodumene, fluorite, aragonite or smithsonite? This time it was fun trying to identify the specimens, but I did much better when it was for a grade.