Corpus Christi is nice for a seaside town, perhaps because it's also a city in its own right and not just an excuse to build incongruously tall buildings along the sand. There is a pirate ship there, an aircraft carrier, and a majestic bridge across the harbor. And despite the lack of nearby trees and shade (or probably because of it), there was an infestation of bats inside the Selena Auditorium, which anchors, if you will, the harbor district. One of them we found sleeping, clung to the white concrete block wall of the stairwell; we named him Oscar.
When work was through, all I wanted was a quick bite to eat. I went to what looked like the more casual of the two hotel restaurants, the Republic of Texas Bar and Grill. Casual it was not. The first thing I was obliged to choose was my water: sparkling, spring or tap. Anything but sea, please, just get on with it. The menu was littered with expensive-sounding "A" words like aioli, asiago and ahi. After Harlingen, I just wanted to sit comfortably in my room, browse the working internet and watch television. It was the swankiest hotel to date, so this should have been easy enough. Unfortunately, I was in a four-star steak restaurant with prices in the dozens of dollars, and my TV show started in forty-five minutes: this was not going to go well. I ordered an appetizer and a side dish, and after twenty minutes with only bread, beer and a carefully selected glass of tap water, asked for the food to be brought to my room.I went there and switched on the tube, whose speakers erupted into paroxysms of static every time something white came on the screen. All the while I was assaulted with text messages received in triplicate regarding the time and location of an informal birthday celebration for one of our company. I'm always up for a couple of rounds at the hotel bar, so I joined the party, which had largely broken up soon after it started. I learned then that there was a balcony in my room, from which I would later hear a cacophony of birds blathering away in the middle of the night (apparently the Iridescent Squawking Bird was just the opening act). At least they drowned out the street sweeper, which from the look of the town was run every twenty minutes daily.
It really was a very fine place to stay, with beds like clouds and staff who would put your food anywhere you asked them to. The breeze came in off the ocean at night, and the internet did work. But after a day of Polish help desks, overcrowded greasy spoons, and the Unfortunate Sidewalk Incident, I was in culture shock from too much refinement too soon. Perhaps as an unconscious display of my appreciation, I woke up the next morning, promptly overflowed the toilet, and checked out. We drove away from the most morbidly-named American city since Horseheads, and steered south toward exactly where we'd come from, the Rio Grande Valley.View Larger Map
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