Dallas 2011

Finally, I am moving on to Dallas. This one is going to be a little bit difficult for me since we went in July 2011. I’ve gone through the pictures a bunch of times but I don’t really have too much to say about it now. Please forgive the picture because unfortunately they are mostly terrible but regardless here we go…

We stayed at the Omni Dallas Hotel at Park West. The Omni is my favorite hotel to stay at. If there is an Omni somewhere most likely I will stay there. This was my first time at this Omni in Dallas. I had stayed at the Omni Mandalay Hotel at Las Colinas a few times but never this one. It was nice, the room wasn’t ready when we got there but I have down on my requests that I want a low floor and a corner room so they were working on getting the right room and that’s why it took a little longer. The room was perfect, it was nice and spacious, which is just what I wanted. It’s the reason I request corner rooms, however, I don’t usually get them so I was really impressed that I got every single one of my requests.

There was a statue by the elevators that the boys loved taking pictures with. Every time we were by it they wanted their picture taken.

The only thing we did the day we checked in was go to the pool and for some reason I didn’t take a picture of the pool but here is a picture of the boys ready to go swimming:

The next morning we started with breakfast at the hotel. One of my favorite things about the Omni is that as a select guest you get free beverage service in the morning. I always order croissants to go with my beverage and I ordered a pancake for the boys.

We went to Fair Park after we finished with breakfast. I purchased Fair Park passports which included admission to several of the museums. From looking at the Fair Park website though I don’t think they have this available anymore. Also, the museums in the park are a bit different now as well. The first one we went to was the Science Place which according to what I’ve read is now closed but they had the Chinasaur exhibit when we went so this is where we headed first.

After the Chinasaurs exhibit there was a place that you could make big bubbles and do some other science experiment type things. After that was a DNA exhibit.

Then was the children’s museum in the same building. They had a little fire department area where you could pretend to be a firefighter.

Then there was the Little Urban Farm area. They had John Deere tricycles to ride on, vegetables to pick from the garden, and a chicken coop.

The next area we went to had a little stage and different hats to put on a play. There was also a prairie dog tunnel to crawl through, rock wall, a big spider web and small animals like turtles and fish to look at.

After the Science Place we went to the Dallas Museum of Natural History. There was a hall with animals and Connor took a picture with the wolf and JT took one with the bear. They were huge but they don’t look as big in the pictures as they did in person.

Upstairs they had some fossils and the boys enjoyed putting their hand in the hole to make the ammonite open and close.

After this we ate lunch at the Old Mill Inn…

…and then we moved on to the Children’s Aquarium.

They had a stingray touch pool and you could buy food to feed them but they were already sold out of the food when we got there so we were only able to touch them and one of the stingrays jumped out at Connor. I’m pretty sure he was hungry and thought we had food.

Next we went to the Texas Discovery Gardens. They have a butterfly exhibit and I kept trying to get a picture of the butterflies as they were flying right by the boys but I kept missing. I was able to get one good picture of a butterfly that landed on the railing though.

We walked around the outside gardens some as well but they were setting up for a wedding.

Here are pictures of some of the landmarks in Fair Park:

Later in the evening we went to Medieval Times. I am signed up to receive e-mails from them and they send you a coupon for free admission on your birthday with another paid adult admission so since it was my birthday I got in free. I like Medieval Times, I think it’s fun and the boys really enjoy it as well. Connor loves that you get to go inside a castle and of course there are knights and swords and jousting so he loves it. It is a lot of food for the boys though and we would not have any problem sharing but admission has to be purchased for ages 3 and up. The tomato soup is JT’s favorite thing on the menu, it’s pretty good. Since we last went though I’ve received an e-mail saying that they’ve updated the show and the menu as well. While my pictures are pretty much all not good I’m going to put a few up anyways.

The next day was my actual birthday and we really didn’t do much. I had a photo shoot in the morning with J.R. Kentworthy, the pictures I have up on the main page are from this shoot. After this we went to the Galleria and I think that is really about it. There is a play area in the mall with some big animals to climb on. The boys enjoyed playing here and did not want to leave.

That was basically the end of the trip, we didn’t do anything else that day and left the next morning. Before heading home though we stopped at Dinosaur World in Glenrose so that probably be the next place I write about.