A day in Houston...

We drove into Houston this morning.... beautiful sunny day, getting warm now since the clouds have left us and the temperatures have returned to normal. (Finally.)

First stop was 'New York Bagels' on Hillcroft... a small shop that sells bagels one-by-one, or by-the-dozen. And those bagels... perfectly made, baked so well that if you close your eyes after taking a bite, you'd swear you were in a bagel shop in NYC or on Long Island.  We didn't eat there, but we bought fresh bagels to bring home which are now sitting nicely in the freezer, all wrapped up and ready to defrost when the bagel urge hits... and they will taste as if they'd just been baked.

My husband found three independently-owned bookshops that we stopped at... one sold just new books, and the store was so small and their choices were so few that we didn't stay there very long. The second shop was owned by a man who's been in the book business for 37 years, and his collection of books clearly showed that. His books went from floor to ceiling, and there were metal ladders scattered here and there for browsing the top shelves. (As if...)                                          

That bookshop had a good selection of books, but no rhyme or reason to the location of each section. So many of his books were covered with dust and musty odors that I wouldn't have wanted to add those volumes to my own library shelves. I did find a very decent copy of a biography of Jackie Gleason and I brought that up to the counter to pay for it. The store's owner looked at the cover of the book, let out a long sigh, and told me "Well, I wish I'd had time to read this book before it got selected for purchase."  I resisted the urge to suggest that the reason one opens a bookshop is to sell books.

The last bookstore seemed to have a lot of promise from the outside.... it was an older house, nicely kept on the exterior, and I envisioned little rooms filled with well-stocked shelves and comfy chairs. I was correct about the little rooms... lots of them, resembling a maze. And the shelves were stocked, but the books were so rammed into all of the shelves that the spines were bent on a lot of the hardcovers, and the dust... excuse me while I sneeze.  They did have some chairs here and there, and two sofas, and even a few big pillows on the floor.... none of which would you care to sit on because of the dirt and the dust. Oh well.... when we found our way through the maze and got to the front door, we left quietly.

We had lunch at The Red Lion Pub... advertised as a British pub...... we split an order of fish and chips, which was very good, but not as delicious as the fish we had in London last summer. The pubs in London know how to fry their fish so the outside is crisp, the inside isn't oily, and the filet itself melts like butter as you eat it. We've been spoiled with extremely good restaurants over the years... but... The Red Lion Pub was good, just not great if you've eaten fish and chips in London.

While we were downtown, we stopped in at The British Isles, which is a shop near Rice Village that sells everything and anything that can be imported from England, Scotland, and Wales. I bought some tea biscuits, and a little tea strainer that fits nicely over a teacup, and I found a pretty little teapot with the British flag on it, but it had teeny chips along the spout and they didn't have another. I'll look for it on eBay, and probably find it for less than the price of that expensive little shop.

So that's been the day. My best dark jeans are back in the closet, along with my city shoes and my best purse and scarf... and as I type, Sweet Pea is curled up on my lap snuggled down into my old jeans and he's been purring since we got home. This cat misses us like a puppy would when we're gone for a whole day.

Houston was fun... the traffic was horrible... the construction sites were inconvenient (don't they ever stop building?)... and it's good to be home.