Picnic
We drove downtown to see the Ernst and Young office and explore a little. We had a picnic lunch at a park across the street from the E&Y office and then walked around. Bruce showed me the E&Y building and we walked in some sky walks. Many of the buildings downtown are connected with sky walks which allows you to travel building-to-building without going outside. I would enjoy the walk outside this time of year, but rumor has it that in the summer months it's too hot to go out.
At a fountain in the park downtown.
Hailey climbing up the steps on the playground downtown.
Underground Passages
Bruce had heard of some underground passages, but had never been in them, so we tried to find them. After a fruitless search we asked an elevator companion how to access the underground tunnel. (We were in the E&Y parking garage which is reserved for really important people so Bruce was worried that the "elevator man" would be an E&Y Partner and he would see him the next day at orientation. That would be embarrassing.) Our elevator mate appeared slightly amused by my child-like excitement and kindly gave us directions from our building to the We followed his instructions, but took one shortcut and were unable to locate an access point to the supposed underground tunnels. We circled the exterior of a building, rode the elevator some more, and were running out of time on the parking meter when I asked a doorman. He kindly directed us into the neighboring building and down the escalator, and sure enough, by following his directions we arrived in the TUNNELS! It was really cool. Like a city undergound... or at least like a mall food court, or airport terminal shopping arena. I thought it was really cool, so I'm sure I had my "This is so cool! Can you believe this" face, which Bruce teases me about. :)
Zoo
We left the tunnels and hurried to the car to before our parking meter expired (parking meters take credit cards now. Cool, huh?). Then we drove a few minutes to the zoo. Bruce found that the Houston Zoo does a free day the 2nd Tuesday of every month after 1PM, and since we happened to be tourists on the 2nd Tuesday of the month it worked out just perfect for us to go to the zoo. It wasn't too crowded and was a whole new cultural experience (let's just say it's not Provo). We enjoyed the animals and Hailey loved the seals.
The camera batteries were dead (Always buy brand name batteries. We just bought these cheap batteries while we were downtown and we could hardly get the camera on because there was not enough juice in the batteries)We headed home to Kevin & Laurel's house, our temporary home, and called it a night.
