11th-15th March - Amarillo and Dallas/Fort Worth

After a rude early start, got our friend the Greyhound to Amarillo from Santa Fe.

There is NOTHING in Amarillo, not even a town centre as it's just a massive sprawl so our 2 nights and 1 full day there were mainly spent in the vicinity of the hotel and neighbouring highway - nice. If you don't have a car here you can't get anywhere! The locals were amazed we'd come to Amarillo until they realised it was just a planned journey break and we couldn't wait to leave...

Jumped back on the bus to Dallas (another nightmare journey pretty much) and decided to spend our first day touring Fort Worth which promised the old school Texas, ie: cattle and cowboys and we were very chuffed to find both. Fort Worth's only about an hour out of Dallas so we took the train and had a look around the two main areas of Sundance Square and The Stockyards.

Not much going on in Sundance, but we did manage to locate the Dallas Cowboys souvenir shop which had literally EVERYTHING you could possible imagine - including a toaster, cool.

The Stockyards was where the real action was at and walking through the town was like stepping back in time. Old, dusty roads and loads of saloon bars with some comedy names and even funnier characters knocking around. The place is quite touristy, but really fun - we were just gutted we didn't go at the weekend as could have seen a proper rodeo which would have been awesome.

Got stuck into a great burger place for lunch and then checked out 'Billy Bob's Honky Tonk' bar which is the biggest in Texas. Were cheekily charged just to go in, in the day which was a joke, but the place was huge and must be amazing at weekends. They even have an indoor bull riding area!

Wandered round a few traditional cowboy shops which were great (got myself some gloves for next winter) then lined the streets with the other tourists to see the daily street cattle drive. Long-horn bulls are bloody massive and must provide a few hundred burgers per beast.

Morning of the next day in Dallas was spent checking out the infamous spot where JFK was assassinated. Pretty weird in way of a tourist attraction, but there were tourists swarming all over the shop. Got a few pictures, but a bit weird to be walking around where someone was murdered... The place is a hell of a lot smaller than I expected.

Checked out a sculpture of about 25 cattle being driven down a hill which sounds better than me describing it, but was cool. Then managed to catch the Man U v Marseille Champions League game - terrible game, great result. Very funny listening to American summarisers who have no idea what they're talking about!