Seeing the US through Dutch eyes: Amarillo and big in Texas

“Show me the way to Amarillo…”

That’s where we stopped for a day on our road trip to the Grand Canyon. We weren’t entirely sure what to expect there, and a good thing too that we didn’t have high hopes. Maybe we missed something, but we couldn’t find anything that held our interest. The Kwahadi Museum about Indian Culture could have been good, but the Dancers weren’t performing, so all we could do was wander through the exhibition.imageFor us, the highlight of Amarillo was The Big Texan, a restaurant that’s mainly famous for its challenge to eat a 72oz steak in an hour. Kinda sad huh? Watching the people take to challenge and eat till nauseated shouldn’t be good for your own appetite, but somehow the restaurant got all of it right. The food was good, everything was decked out in what tourist hope to find in Texas: cowboy hats, horns, hides, horses and cowboy boots the waiters were wearing, jingling because of the spurs. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, helped by the band of musicians that played “Take me home, country roads” at our table.

imageIt got me contemplating Texas as we had seen it, the ranch gates alongside the roads, the oil derricks in the field, the huge windmill parks for electricity, the Longhorns and the cowboy hats, and on the other hand the Spanish feel of San Antonio. There’s one thing I noticed above all: I’ve never seen so many depictions of the shape of the state or of the Texas star. On the traffic boards, on bridge-pillars, in the grass alongside one of our hotels, and even as a waffle shape at breakfast. We leave Texas with the knowledge that Texans really feel that everything is bigger and better in Texas!

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