Zumba

Today we woke up in downtown Houston and Bernie woke up determined to find an Apple store to have her laptop checked because she's been having some problems with it.

Bernie went online and made an appointment for today at what we thought was the closest Apple store, we expected it to be about 5 minutes away. It turns out it was more like 30 minutes away and there is nothing they can do to fix the problems: a slow charging battery and weak wi-fi connections. Just grin and bear it.

Then we drove about another 30 minutes to uptown, luckily avoiding most of rush hour traffic, and went to see the Water Wall. What an amazing place this is, it would be perfect for a hot, summer day.

The wall is known as a "horseshoe of rushing water". This semicircular fountain is 64 feet tall. Water cascades down in sheets all the way from the top to the base below, on both the front and the back. Between the splashing and the wind, you can get quite wet if you get too close.

Then we drove another 20 minutes or so back to downtown. We went to Discovery Green where they were having a free outdoor class of Zumba, which uses merengue, salsa, flamenco and calypso for a well paced workout. That was fun.

Then we walked around the park. Discovery Green is a new park with some interesting and unique sculptures. There are listening vessels, when you sit in them, you can hear the person in the other vessel very clearly even though they're far away. They also have two huge rectangular boxes at opposite ends of the park, which are covered in colorful plastic blocks and have a door. This is where you go to get to the parking garage below ground. www.discoverygreen.com

It was starting to get a little cold so we decided to leave and then drove to Root Memorial Square. Because there was some kind of sporting event going on tonight, it was impossible to find parking in that area but lucky for us, what we went to see was right next to the road.

The Heritage Lanterns are five stainless steel sculptures, between five to seven feet tall, with internal lights that change colors, which shine through Victorian style cut-outs. They are hard to describe but they are very beautiful.

After that we decided we had played tourists enough for one day so we went to park overnight at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, because they have free admission every Thursday and tomorrow is Thursday.