On the Road and Under the Skies; #2

HOUSTON, TEXAS – Our great western adventure started on Thursday morning as we rolled out of the drive-way on our 22nd wedding anniversary at 7:10 a.m. heading for our first stop in Lafayette  Louisiana   We had plugged all of our stops into the GPS unit the evening before and “Lucy” as we’ve named the GPS voice, routed us down US 43 through Hamilton, AL and then through Vernon, AL into Columbus, MS.  We finally was routed to I-55 in Jackson, MS.

We arrived in Lafayette a little after four p.m. and got checked into the Quality Inn that was right off the interstate.  The motel was about average and just a little bit on the ragie side but we were only staying one night and we’re getting points on our Choice Hotels loyalty card.

For dinner Thursday evening, we went to a restaurant that Debra had been told about called The Blue Dog Cafe.  I checked Yelp and it had been receiving good reviews so we were looking forward to dining there.

The restaurant opened at 5 p.m and we arrived about 5:15 p.m. and was promptly seated in the dining room.  Our waiter was really a nice young guy and took good care of us keeping our glasses topped off the entire meal.  We ordered our meals and while the half fried oyster, half fried shrimp plate that Debra ordered was very good, the seafood combination plate I ordered was not up to the price tag on the menu.  All of the seafood, the shrimp, oysters, clams, crawfish tail and catfish (catfish is a seafood now??) was way over-fried and tasted of old grease.

Since it was our anniversary, the restaurant did give us a free dessert of bread pudding that was excellent.  So the meal wasn’t a total wash for us.

We rolled out of the Quality Inn around 8:00 a.m. heading for Houston, arriving here a little after 11:30 a.m.  We stopped at the Quality Inn and checked in, but were told we couldn’t get in our room until after 1 p.m. which was fine with us since we wanted to go eat lunch.

We had already decided we wanted to check out a New York style Deli that was featured on Diners, Drive-In’s & Dives on the Food Channel.  We told “Lucy” to get us there and she did, however the driver couldn’t follow directions and missed the exit because of the heavy traffic going into the downtown Houston area.  We made the next exit and Lucy immediately recalculated and routed us to Kenny and Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen located in an upscale strip center not far from the Galleria mall.  And, when I say upscale, I mean UPSCALE, the lot was full of Mercedes Benz, BMW’s, Caddies, and other high end automobiles.  I even spotted a couple of Maseraties in the lot.

We were able to get seated within just a few minutes after arriving even though it was during the noon rush.  The place was huge and was packed out with the lunch crowd.  The waitress gave us a menu that was a double extra large size and then gave us the high-points of the best things to order.  Debra settled on Philly Cheese steak sandwich and I got the Roof of the Mouth special, half pastrami and half corned beef on rye.  Now as sandwiches goes this thing was gigantic.  Debra’s sandwich was also in the same XXL size and we wound up getting half of each sandwich to go.  We also snagged a couple of desserts to take with us, a XL slice of coconut cream pie and a 3XL black and white cookie.

Lucy got us back to the Quality Inn and we got into our room.  After catching up on our emails, Facebook posts and doing a little research on our destination for tomorrow decided a nap was in order.  We awoke refreshed and decided to get into the outdoor pool for a bit.  The water was a bit chilly and the wind was blowing about 18 mph according to the news.  We only stayed in the pool for a short time but it was refreshing.

For our dinner this evening we finished off the sandwiches we had ordered at lunch.  Our room has a fridge and microwave so the second half of the sandwich was as tasty as the first half.

Our plans for tomorrow is to ride down to Galveston Island and check out the beaches.  My buddy Jim and I had visited the Galveston several years ago when we attended the National Barbecue Association’s conference here in Houston, but Debra has never been there.  We’re looking forward to checking it out.

Not much in the way of pictures yet, but here are some we grabbed with our cell phones.