So i’ve been lazy and spending my time doing rare stuff like sleeping and doing laundry and showering so I haven’t had time to post stuff about my day yesterday but here it is.
GALVESTON.
I arrived at Galveston not yesterday but the day before at about 7pm at night after a pretty short bus ride. I arrived at my hotel and was kind of amazed by the place just because of how relaxing it is. Galveston is this small island off of the Texas shore and it it is surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico.
Going there I didn’t know much about the place but when I was in Houston a few people I met were telling me that it is definitely a summer town. People go there on the Summer holidays and it comes alive with piers and beaches and everything of that nature but I also didn’t know that Hurricane Ike had passed through the town in 2008 and it made a massive impact.
For dinner I went to Fish Tales and had my first ever Catfish experience. It was strange. It was a really soft fish and I wasn’t used to it but I hadn’t eaten that day so I ate the whole thing haha.
The next day I just walked around a bit. I’ve been really tired for the past two days because every day i’ve been going to a new location and it’s just been really tiring. I’m spending my days exploring cities and then i’m spending my nights on buses getting little sleep and I haven’t had any time to just relax.
I kind of made up my mind yesterday that I didn’t want to go all out sightseeing in Galveston, I just wanted to sit on the beach and just soak up everything around me instead of stressing out. But on the complete flipside I went to the Tattoo shop next door to my hotel and got my nose pierced.
I’ve always been scared of piercings. Just thinking about them makes me feel uneasy and i’ve never understood why people get them but for some crazy reason I now have my nose pierced! I was just about to back out of it and then Susie called me up and I picked the jewellery I wanted and then entered the room and kind of knew that that was it.
It didn’t really hurt. It was a feeling I wasn’t used to and my eye watered up and I did swear but that was kind of it. It still feels strange though, having something hanging out of my nose haha.
But because I was going straight from my hotel to a bus to Houston and then a bus to New Orleans I didn’t have time to visit a pharmacy and get all of the cleaning gear so the lady that did my piercing offered to take me to the pharmacy to get everything which I was so relieved and thankful for. However this 5 minute trip to the chemist and back turned into a one hour tour of Galveston and I am once again so thankful because I wasn’t going to see the island because I was just tired.
Susie ended up showing me all of the Mansions on the island and let me take a few pictures. I didn’t take many pictures of Galveston though just because images wouldn’t do it justice. I still can not get over how much history is on such a small island! Not only did the place go through a hurricane 5 years ago which tore down a lot of the beautiful trees on the island and also impacted a lot of the buildings but there was also a giant Hurricane in 1900 which really tore through the island.
I got shown that on the houses that survived the 1900 Hurricane they all got given a plaque which goes on their house and it’s a little state of Texas. On these houses the bottom level is also half underground just because the island had to be built up to put in a shore and make the island larger and more prepared for natural disasters that may happen.
We went past some amazing little sites like where a pirate who took over the island from the indians used to live and a pier that was torn down because of the illegal gambling that used to happen on it and the most amazing thing for me was the face building.
There is a building next to the large hospital on the island that was owned by this man. The Hospital was always wanting to buy the land so they could extend but this man was so decided on never letting them have the land and told his children that they were never to sell it to the hospital but they could sell it to the trawlers and people that use the boats next to it.
Anyway this man died and sure enough the children sold this building to the hospital and then after that some strange things began to happen. On one side of the building it is just a collection of cement like tiles on the wall. Susie drove up and told me to look for a face and it took me a few seconds but sure enough, across the water all I could see is this very clear looking face kind of watermarked into one of the cement tiles. It was extremely eerie. She then told me that it used to be on the middle tile but it was removed because it wasn’t wanted, and then this image of a face moved to the top tile and they were persistent on it not being allowed on the building so it was removed with chemicals this time and now it is on the bottom tile. It takes years and years but it keeps becoming more defined and it really did terrify me.
Not only was there this creepy silhouette of a mans face on the building but also a lot of people had died their from eerie situations. Like children going to see it in their car and then rolling into the river behind it and drowning. And one of the nurses going to see it after her shift and then falling into the river and drowning. At this stage I didn’t feel that safe being in a car, on the edge of this river that people apparently drowned in whilst doing the same thing we were doing. But yeah, it was terrifying and something I would have never known about if I hadn’t gotten a personal tour from my piercer haha.
We then went up the seawall to where all of the massive ships go through the canal to reach the main dock. Susie then told me about a few occasions in which bodies were found in the same area we were driving through. I kind of just thought that they were stories that had happened and weren’t really, real? I don’t know. There was a baby who was found on the side of the road in the grassy area. Apparently a man stole this baby, sexually assaulted this BABY, stomped on its face and then threw it there hoping the Coyotes would get it. Like, what the fuck. That’s something that’s made up, that isn’t supposed to be real. He then went from church to church asking for donations and eventually made it up to the North East coast before turning himself in and then receiving the death penalty.
And this other girl she was found by some fisherman in a plastic tub on the shore. A photo of her had been sent out to help identify her and a grandmother on the side of town saw the image, said that that had been her granddaughter and her daughter had recently run off with a man and she had not seen any of them in months. It was later found out that the mother and this guy had killed her daughter, put her in a plastic coffin and then sent her off to sea!
At this stage I was just kind of in awe. In Australia we have shootings and murders but these were just hardcore documentary type stories - and then we drove past the crosses on the side of the road which are there to mourn both of the children and it all became real. It was absolutely fucked and the worst thing was was that neither of them lived anywhere near Galveston and they instead went there thinking no one would find the bodies and in the process they tarnished the reputation of a great little town.
Anyway the Island is amazing. I keep saying this but this small island had more history than all of Australia and the main difference is is that they have kept it all. They have restored all of the mansions which makes the town look immaculate and then there are all of the sites from previous dates in history and it was just strange to be shown around the town and be pointed to something tiny and unpopular which was such a historic site!
I can’t thank Susie enough though. She didn’t have to show me around and could of instead stayed at the Tattoo studio but she instead went out of her way to show some Australian tourist with a fresh nose piercing all around her town and give me a tour which was worth so much.
Galveston is great. Everyone go to Galveston, and get a tattoo or piercing there as well.
