Holloways in Houston: A Texas Weekend

I often tell Lan that I don't think we do enough "cool things." There are a lot of unique things that we can do in Houston, and we want to do more of them, so last weekend (well, weekend before last.. I'm behind), we did just that!

Friday was "Go Texan" day, which basically just kicks off the rodeo. As an added bonus, employees at both mine and Lan's companies got to "dress like a Texan" to work. I had never seen so many cowboy hats in one place.

On Friday night, we went downtown for dinner with our friend Emily. Lan had told me about Spaghetti Warehouse before, and I had always pictured a fast food type place, but it was actually a nice restaurant! It was in a really cool building downtown, that is supposedly haunted. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Spaghetti Warehouse's paranormal activity, but there were some ghost tour brochures there. We opted out.

Me with Lan at Spaghetti Warehouse

On Saturday night, we went to the BBQ Competition at the Houston Rodeo. If you've talked to me in the last month, you know that I was really excited for this! I love food and a BBQ Competition just sounded cool. It wasn't what I was expecting, but we had fun!

It was kind of a mix between tailgating and Bulldog Bash, except for much bigger. There were tents and people everywhere! Regular entry got you into general places, but there were also private tents. A lot of these belonged to businesses that would give out tickets to their tent to their customers. We got lucky and got into one of these tents! And let me just say, the BBQ in this tent was delicious.

This is the private tent we went to.

Another cool part of the night was the live music. There were some Texas country bands playing the night we were there (the big country acts play later in the rodeo- this was the kick off weekend).

The stage at the BBQ Competition

There was also a carnival! I don't know what it is about carnivals/fairs, but they have always sounded fun to me- maybe it's the cotton candy and funnel cake. You know how I feel about sweets. Admittedly, these types of things can be kind of a rip off (why does it cost so much to buy tickets???), but we had fun anyway. Lan had fried cookie dough (just as delicious as it sounds) and I had cotton candy. Then, we splurged and rode the ferris wheel. It was pretty cool.