Destination Dallas: Walking Tour of the City

Walking Through Downtown

Being from Dallas-Fort Worth, the tourist attractions are not places that I immediately think to visit.  I have taken for granted that they exist and that people from all over the world take the time to visit them.  When I began my walking tour, I realized that these were places I drove by and never stopped to explore.  I had never set foot on the sidewalk that Abraham Zapruder shot the famous film that captured the assassination of JFK.  I had never walked inside the JFK Memorial.  I had never walked the streets to the Aquarium or the House of Blues.



We first drove up Interstate 35 to Commerce Street, passing Dealey Plaza.  We parked in The Old Red Museum's parking garage and walked over to the plaza.  When we crossed the street toward "The Grassy Knoll," tour guides with fake, vintage newspapers approached us and began telling the facts of November 22, 1963 in great detail.  We walked down the sidewalk and up to the fence that is shrouded with conspiracy theories and saw many special notes to JFK written on the fence pickets. 


We walked over Commerce street to Reunion Tower.  Reunion Tower is next to Union Station.  Union Station was built in 1914 for commerce and is still used for business and leisure travelers as a convenient option to arrive in downtown. 

The City of Dallas launched a publicity campaign that embraced the "everything is bigger in Texas" concept.  They created large, three-dimensional letters B and G, hid them in the city and asked people to pose as the letter I and tweet their photos to a designated outlet.  We found these letters at  local bar and made our own "B-I-G" photograph.

We found our way to the Dallas World Aquarium, the Perot Museum
and the legendary House of Blues, then began walking back to the parking garage.  We passed the JFK Memorial again, but this time it was lit with classic white lights that made it stand out in the middle of the hustle and bustle.  Behind the memorial, the skyline also illuminated with Reunion Tower's iconic white globe.  Would the Dallas skyline be the same without it?