team clark: houston happiness

first, i have to tell you the story of our superfun rental car. we had reserved a compact car, because it was cheap. we pulled into the lot at the airport and saw this little cutie:

when we got up to the counter, we asked if we could upgrade to the bug out in the lot. she said, "yes," but it would cost us some money. so we shrugged out shoulders and settled for what we had reserved. she finished up our paperwork and sent us on out, saying, "just pick any car from the row marked 'compact.' if that row is empty, pick any from the 'mid-size' row."

well.

there were zero cars in the compact row and only one car in the mid-size row - the very same lime green bug we had seen when we arrived!!! i mean, we had no choice but to have the funnest car on the lot. haha!

and yes. we bought a flower to put in it. a big flower =)

off we headed to houston's aloft hotel. it was super contemporary, and we really liked how the room was laid out. it was pretty groovy, but we don't think we'd choose this hotel again, because they charge you extra for everything - parking, breakfast, etc.

but we really enjoyed staying there! we had been wanting to check out this hotel for a while (there is one near arundel mills), and we ended up with it through hotwire (our new addiction). all we knew was the general location of the hotel (houston, galleria area), that it was ranked at 3.5 stars, an impressive listing of typical hotels at this ranking, and the oh-so-sweet price.

here we are just arriving with our groceries for the week:

and check out this groovy sink! i totally want one =P

later that day, we tried to go to the zoo, but we ended up getting all turned around in an attempt to find parking. so we ended up arriving just 10 minutes after they closed. so we walked around the park instead.

which was LOVELY! oh man. it's like a bite-size version of cental park, nestled in the medical center area of houston. there's a zoo, a really nice outdoor theater, a lake, a japanese garden, a trail, a cute little train, picnic tables... it's awesome.

that night we ate at the daily grill at the galleria mall (which has an ICE RINK inside of it, by the way. so cool!), and we were DELIGHTED to learn that they have a gluten-free menu! this is SO good to know, since a daily grill recently opened up at the new town centre.

ballet class on monday kicked. my. butt. oh man. i was completely winded before barre was even over. but i pushed through, and i was AMAZED at how quickly my body adapted to that much physical exertion. by wednesday or thursday i was really starting to feel less drained by it, and friday it felt totally normal to be dancing 4.5-5 hours per day. hah! crazy. the human body is seriously incredible.

i really enjoyed modern class. i used to have randall flinn's modern classes every summer at ballet magnificat's summer intensive. but it's been about 7 years since then. it felt so good to take his classes again. i love his particular style of modern. love it.

i was also SO pleasantly surprised to really enjoy mime class!! i have seen a couple of mime performances in my life and have, honestly, never really liked it. but our teacher was extremely talented and completely hilarious. he made it both fun and interesting. i learned a lot. we put together a mime performance of "star wars, episode VI - in five minutes" that was a blast. i played very exciting inanimate objects such as a door, a trash-compactor wall, and a wing of darth vader's tie-fighter. haha! what a hoot.

we also had a jazz class on wednesday. best jazz class of my life. i just adored the combination we learned. it was to amos lee's "keep it lose, keep it tight." i bought the song off of itunes as soon as we got home =) you should seriously check out that link.

i, unfortunately, have no pictures to share with you of the dancing part of the vacation, even though daniel did watch several classes. everyone i talked to was super impressed with how supportive daniel was/is. =) i am very proud of him!

we were so blessed with accommodating servers and restaurants whenever we ate out all week. this might seem like a silly point to bring up, but eating out can be super stressful when you have to live gluten-free! so that made the whole vacation more relaxing and enjoyable. we ate at outback (thanks for the gift card, mom & dad clark!), chipotle, and goode company bbq in houston, and the flying dutchman in kemah. way to go, guys! you did a great job taking care of my special dietary needs! =)

we checked out the water wall near out hotel. it's a huge semi-circle fountain, where the water pours both inside and outside of the structure. it's hard to explain, so take my word for it. it was cool.

this is me, inside the water wall. for some reason, the inside water was not on that day. daniel went back later in the week to check out the full awesomeoness that is the water wall.

daniel also spent some time checking out the highest buildings in downtown houston. here's my favorite of his shots from that excursion:

he trekked all the way down to galveston, houston's beach. it reminded him of the outerbanks a little bit. unfortunately, galveston is still recovering from hurricane ike.

we got to visit joel osteen's church for a wednesday night service. what we found out is that, besides being unbelievably huge and having a very confusing parking garage, it's a pretty normal church.

we also made our way back to the zoo, and we made it before they closed this time!

i was especially excited to see the giraffes, because we had not seen then at the national zoo last year on my birthday. i like giraffes =)

last but not least, daniel made a trip out to the nasa space center. i was dancing. he missed me, and so he took dozens and dozens of pictures. so sweet. i'll share 2 of them with you =)