Galveston is my happy place

This is our fourth trip to Galveston and it truly is our happy place. I love it because it has tons of history, lots of museums, amazing restaurants and a great vibe. We rent a condo for a week and just soak it all up. The first weekend in December, they have what's called "Dickens on the Strand". It's a fund raiser for the Galveston Historic Foundation and it's a hoot. People really get into it by dressing up.

This would be "Queen Victoria and Prince Albert" with her guards as she strolls down the strand. Basically there are two streets, Strand and Mechanic, that are blocked off from 20th to about 26th street. You pay to get in and there are vendors selling gifts, drinks and food.

There are also shows, like this one. This is Cirque La Vie. This guy is holding this girl up with one hand that is on her neck!  Unfortunately, the rest of the show got rained out. It only rained about 15 minutes but it was enough to shut down their show.

They have a parade where anyone who dresses up can join in. This is Father Christmas. In the buggy in front of him is Charles Dickens. Earlier, he was reading A Christmas Carol in Saengerfest Park.

This group was our favorite. It's a family of "beggars". And it's really a family that is participating. We went to dinner later that day and they were seated across from us.

Every time we go down there, we do something new. This time we went to the Grand 1894 Opera House that opened in 1895. The theater survived the 1900 hurricane and does live shows.

We went to see A Christmas Carol. It was a Dickens kind of weekend. They were great! We really enjoyed the show and the tickets were relatively inexpensive. I highly recommend seeing a show here and I hope we do it again.

We also went to the Bryan Museum. It's $15 to get in and well worth it. This was the 1892 Galveston Orphan's home. Not all the kids that lived here were orphans. Some were only "partial" orphans, meaning that one parent was still alive. In those situations, the parents couldn't take care of the kids so they went here. The building survived the 1900 storm but it was severely damaged. The Home was started by George Dealey. His son is George Dealey of Dealey Plaza fame in Dallas. Just being inside this amazing house was worth the price of admission. 

But there was more! They had tons of art exhibits that has been collected by J.P. Bryan. He was an oilman who began collecting historical art of Texas and the American West. He bought the house, restored it and in 2015, he opened the museum. Note that in the early days of Texas when it was still in control of Spain and then Mexico, you had to be Catholic to get a land grant. So there were several missions. It looks like these statues came from one of these old missions.

If you want to have an event at the Bryan Museum, apparently you can rent it. This room is a bar and has beautiful furniture. In the days of the home, it was the bedroom for the Matron assigned to the attached girls dormitory. There was also an audio tour that you could listen to on your phone. On the audio tour, ex-residents of the home would describe what room you were in and how things were when they lived there. It was an orphan's home for 100 years before it closed in 1984.

The last new thing we did was go to the Moody Mansion (also $15 entry fee). This house was built in 1895. It has 28,000 square feet and 31 rooms. Up until the renovations in 1983, there was no air conditioning! The house was not built by the Moodys. It survived the 1900 storm and the owners had been desperately trying to sell it. William L. Moody, Jr bought it for $20,000. 

The front porch. William L. Moody Jr was a prominent business man in Galveston. He ran several businesses. He was in banking, insurance, cotton, and was even in the railroad business. You probably recognize the name. There are buildings all over Texas that bear the name, such as Moody Coliseum at SMU in Dallas. He was also a great philanthropist.

The family lived in the house until 1983 when hurricane Alicia hit. Then Mary Moody Northern, William's daughter, was forced to move out. I think that's when she decided to open the house as a museum. It was restored and then she opened her own endowment to manage it. This is in the butler's pantry. It's an intercom system. The butler would buzz the kitchen and speak very clearly and slowly so he could be understood and ask for the next course to be sent up. That's because the kitchen was on the ground floor. The food would be sent up via a dumb waiter. The butler would dish it up and serve it.

Look at the beautiful staircase! At the landing is a stained glass window that was there when they bought the house. As many hurricanes that have hit Galveston, this window has never been affected. At one point, the panels were removed and sent to be cleaned. The window company broke five of the panels. That had to be heartbreaking! They had to reproduce them as best they could but it looks good. This was also well worth the cost. There's an audio tour on your phone that tells you about the rooms you're in. For $35, you can get a live guided tour. But you have full access to the first and second floor.

It was super windy when we were down there. We like to go sit at Fort San Jacinto and just watch the ships come in but this time the wind was too strong to sit there for very long.

One of the many reasons we like to come here in the winter. There's no one here! We took a few long walks along the seawall. It's fabulous. That's the Pleasure Pier behind John. 

And of course, there's the beach. Not for swimming but for walking. We found a new condo that we like quite a bit. It's on the far east end of the island so Seawall Blvd doesn't run right by the balcony. It's nice and peaceful. And we have the beach to ourselves.

We tried several new restaurants while we were here and went back to some old favorites. It amazes me that this tiny island can have so many good places to eat!

It was a great week. The weather was a little iffy. We had some rain and some very strong wind but overall, it was too fun. Until next time!