About 20 minutes from Allen is the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, on SMU Boulevard in Dallas.
Well it’s 338 am here in Allen TX. Thanks to all for all the great suggestions. Uncle Julios was spot on for dinner, Due to a certain car rental’s outstandingly poor customer service, we were unable to do any sightseeing. Probablg wouldn’t have mattered, this was a work trip and the boss is notoriously tight fisted about that stuff while paradoxically generous about things like beers with meals. Looking foreward to getting back home where i can get a decent cuppa. It seems that everywhere I’ve been since wheels up sunday afternoon, the locals have hidden the good coffee and foisted that ‘orse than gas station swill’ starbucks coffee on the tourists and travelers. Sigh, I honestly expected better from a hospitality company such as Marriots. Maybe its a local thing. Anyway, again thank you everyone for all the suggeztions, once more Dopers come through.
I visited the Dallas-Fort Worth area with my family for a few days in the summer of 2015. The Perot Science Museum in Dallas is one of the best science museums I’ve ever seen, and I’ve visited my share. We enjoyed the Stockyards area in Fort Worth, watched the daily cattle drive and made our way through the cattle-pen maze. As a kosher-observing Jew, I couldn’t indulge in any of the restaurants there, but they sure smelled amazing. Oh, and the Fort Worth Zoo is not only a top-notch zoo for the animals, but it’s also brilliantly designed for visitor experience, and its logo is probably the cleverest I’ve ever seen.
We also visited the Cowgirl Museum, which was OK, but didn’t blow me away.
Fort Worth has grown a lot these past few years, and continues growing. There are tons of (building) cranes everywhere it seems. A lot of new restaurants and shopping centers. We have really great art museums, an awesome zoo, botanic gardens (the Japanese gardens are really nice). The Water Garden is fun to see. There is a cool drive in, too. The stockyards/Billy Bobs are not to my taste, but a lot of people like them. I find I rarely go to Dallas anymore.
::Bump::
Two dinners & a day in Dallas, between the two Hyatt’s, @ Reunion Tower & Uptown. No car. There’s a request from one in the group to the Book Depository/Grassy Knoll.
Any restaurant suggestions in that area or what else we should see on Sat?
My go-to in your area, and not far from the 6th floor museum, is the Dallas World Aquarium which is basically an indoor rain forest built inside a gutted office building. There’s also the Perot Museum of Nature and Science which is geared more towards kids than adults, but is still a interesting place if you like architecture as well. You’re in downtown Dallas, so there’s tons of stuff going on. Check out Art & Seek and put in your address for concerts, museum exhibits, theatre and more. If you’re into steakhouses there’s a really classy and tasty one that is more of a hole in the ground than a hole in the wall in downtown.
If you’re into hipster stuff check out Deep Ellum on the South East side of downtown. Lots of bars, coffee shops, concert venues, street art, eateries of all varieties, and a splash of twinks in leather.
We built a park on top of a freeway with a restaurant, outdoor games, exercise equipment, food trucks and such as well, it’s on the border between downtown and uptown.
Downtown has really been revitalized in the past few years. We’ve still got the classic stuff that a big downtown area has, with major museums, sculpture gardens, opera houses, state of the art theatres, and parks. But we’ve recently really upped the natural side of Dallas with some really cool new developments along the Trinity river on the South and West side of Downtown including horseback riding, forest trail hiking, biking, kyaking, etc.
Enjoy,
Steven
Meso Maya is just on the other side of Woodall Rogers from downtown. It’s Latin. Not necessarily just Mexican. If you want some good (and strong) margaritas, you could either check out Mi Cocina in the West Village or Gloria’s (there’s one just south of the West Village).
What kind of food are you wanting?
The George W. Bush library isn’t a bad choice to make. It will bring back a lot of memories from that time and you can get a pic in a replica oval office.
The big problem is that Dallas is kind of sparse on tourist attractions. The stuff relating to the JFK assassination, along with Southfork Ranch (actually in Parker, east of Plano) are pretty much the sum total of tourist attractions.
We have a pretty good culinary scene, and there are some fun bars in Uptown (I’m partial to the Ginger Man), but outside of that, there’s not really much.
If cost is no problem, I highly recommend the Bullion restaurant downtown. It’s spectacular- probably in the top 1-2 restaurants in the area.
Oh! One other thing that might be a little far, and probably too crowded for a Saturday, but a bar off of Henderson Ave (a few miles north of downtown) is doing a pop-up for a month where it was renovated to look like the Drunken Clam from “Family Guy.”
This will be the second weekend that it’s been open and doesn’t scream “Dallas” by any means, obviously, but in case some of the other Dallasites haven’t heard about it, I thought I’d make mention.
If you want to bar-hop, McKinney Avenue is your best bet. Not only are there a lot of bars fairly close to one another, but you can take the (free) McKinney Ave. Trolley to go all the way from the north part of downtown to the West Village off of Lemmon Ave.
I made a list of 28+ bars within walking distance of my old job in Uptown, complete with happy hour specials, times open, etc. Sent it to some co-workers and I guess they sent it out to others. Months later, a friend sent it to me, unaware I’d created the thing.
I miss Idle Rich Pub…
Well shit, the board ate my post. Downtown, try the Dallas Museum of Art and the Crow Museum of Asian Art. Both are quite good, the Crow is very good for its size.
https://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=breweries&find_near=deep-ellum-brewing-company-dallas is a post listing the top 10 breweries in the downtown-ish/Deep Ellum area. I’m a fan of Braindead in Deep Ellum, and about a mile or two away, Community Brewing and Peticolas Brewing. (Uber to those) Oh, almost forgot Craft and Growler near Fair Park. A growler filling station with a great selection of beer, and they do by the glass pours as well.
El Fenix is decent Tex-Mex in the downtown area. I’ve never been, but Meso Maya mentioned upthread sounds really good, and it’s right next door. I don’t usually go out to dinner in Dallas, so I can’t be much help there. Uchi is a small chain (outposts in Austin and Dallas) that is supposed to be excellent artistic Japanese food, and Uchi Dallas is not very far from the uptown Hyatt I think you mentioned.
Most of the rest of these are too far for me to recommend walking to, but they still might be useful. I usually have a car in Dallas, so I’m not very good at recommending destinations that’ll require mass transit or Ubering.
I do recommend the deli counter at Jimmy’s Food Store in the lower Greenville area near-ish to downtown. If you’ve great Italian food in your area, perhaps it won’t be the novelty to you that it is to me.
A bit of a drive, but if you’re in the mood for a German deli, Kuby’s Sausage House and European Restaurant has excellent sausages, various German breads, and other delicacies. I’m partial to the Thuringer sausage.
Other than the museums, I wouldn’t walk to many of these destinations. At least the weather won’t be the mind-numbingly hot that it seems to be every other time I go to Dallas.
Community is great. Their “open house / tour” on Saturday is from 1-5 and is usually packed. I lived within walking distance when they first opened and back then, for $7.50, you could get 4 beers and a commemorative glass, with the glass styles varying from week to week. Needless to say, half of my glassware is branded with their logo.
Haven’t been in some months, but they used to have live music, games, and food trucks. Once they walled off the tap room, it kinda changed the dynamic, but it’s still one of my favorite breweries.
Even if you don’t go to Community, but end up at a place that sells Community’s Mosaic IPA, I highly recommend it. But, be warned, it’s strong. (I was very thankful that I lived within walking distance, because after an afternoon at the open house and using my four tickets, a nice, short nap was usually in order.)
The beer is really very good. Not as inventive as some of the things that Braindead comes up with, but very true to their styles. Their ESB and Imperial Stouts are some of the finest examples of those two in America.
For coffee shops, I’ve liked Ascension’s original location on Oak Lawn, even if they can be a touch…fussy…about brewing a cup of coffee. Hard to argue with the results though. There’s another location that’s a short walk from the Uptown Hyatt location mentioned. If it’s as good as the original location, the coffee’s worth the hike. Magnolias is supposed to be a decent coffee shop near that uptown Hyatt as well.
The Bishop Arts area is pretty nice- restaurants, shops, pedestrian friendly, with a decent BBQ joint and a pretty cool little cider brewery bar (Bishop Cider) as well as a lot of other fun places.
You can get there(within 2-3 blocks anyway) from Union Station (right near the Reunion Hyatt) on the Dallas Streetcar, so in this case, public transit for the win!