We woke up early to go to the Bryan Museum. The museum holds a portion of J.P. Bryan’s collection. It is housed in the rebuilt Galveston Children’s Home that used to be one of the orphanages on the island. If you didn’t know, Galveston was hit by a catastrophic hurricane in 1900 that demolished the island. Over 8,000 people were killed. It is the largest natural disaster to ever hit the United States. At the time there was no sea wall. Afterwards they built a 17 ft sea wall because the storm surge was 16.3 feet. If you ever get a chance to watch the movie/documentary Isaac’s Storm, I highly recommend it. I saw it several years ago and have always been fascinated by everything that went wrong on that day. There are also several good documentaries on YouTube about the storm.

We got to the museum at 9:45 not realizing that it didn’t open until 10. This gave us a chance to walk around the grounds.

There are so many monuments around the island that pay homage to the 1900 hurricane.

When we went inside to buy our tickets they asked us if we wanted to pay $5 each to see a documentary about the storm. Of course I said yes. So in we went.

Can we just marvel at this restroom for a minute?

The museum is 3 floors and is filled to the brim with artifacts from all over the world. I swear Mr. Bryan, who by the way is 86 and still collecting, is a modern day Indiana Jones. The artwork itself is incredible.

The top 3 on the right are by Andy Warhol.

This one was my favorite. It’s much darker in person. I love the way the lights just shine.

Donny was telling me that Mr. Bryan must have known Donald Sutherland because this was Donald’s house. Donny either did not have his glasses on or something because look at the description card.

We did get a good laugh at that.

I absolutely love Folk Art.

There were some amazing pieces.

There was just so much of so many different artifacts.

We thoroughly enjoyed our 2 hours spent here. Worth every penny, except for the documentary. I found it very strange that it didn’t mention St. Mary’s Asylum orphanage. Every single documentary I have watched always mentions it because the story is so heartbreaking. There was no warning of the hurricane for any of the residents. The nuns at the asylum noticed the water rapidly rising. The orphanage was right on the beach. They tied the children to themselves with clothes line. No one made it.

After the museum we were getting hungry. Definitely weren’t going back to Fish Tales. I had heard of a place called Mel’s Blue Plate. It was located in a Valero gas station. Oh lawdy, that was some of the best shrimp I’ve ever had.

It’s only open for breakfast and lunch and who cares if there’s no water view because the food is out of this world delicious. By the way, calories do not count on vacation.

Literally inside a gas station.

I had wanted to see the Rosenberg Library. It’s the oldest, still operating, library in Texas. The building was finished June 22, 1904.

The 4th floor was remodeled to look exactly how it looked when it was opened.

There was a whole section on the hurricane. They did a great job on that exhibit. You could push buttons and the narrator would talk about the pictures. There was a big screen that Donny pushed the button for and guess what was on it? The Great Storm. The exact same documentary that we had paid $5 to see at the museum. Donny just said, “we were bamboozled”. LOL

I had walked up to the 4th floor and Donny had taken the elevator. Because I’m deathly afraid of heights I decided to take the elevator back down so I wouldn’t have to look down all the way to the first floor as I was walking down the stairs. We stepped into the extremely small elevator car. The doors closed. Donny said, “This is a Westinghouse elevator which I don’t think they make anymore”. We pushed the button for the first floor. Nothing happened. We tried pushing other floors. Nothing. Donny said, “Push the door open button!”. I have never been out of an elevator so fast in my life. Needless to say I will take the heights over being stuck in a small box.

Next we decided to go to The Strand. It is the historic district with shops, art studios and restaurants. Donny and I both follow an artist named Mike O’Quinn. We love his work and love to watch his videos of how he makes each piece.

The woman who works there had just sold 20 something pieces to one person which is why there are so many spaces. I loved the smiley face on the far right. I don’t know why we didn’t buy one, but I’m thinking I’ll be getting a piece for Father’s day for Donny.

We went into the Witchery which I thought was really cool.

I hadn’t been to the Strand since I was about 13. It’s changed a lot.

The architecture is amazing. I love the fountains.

One of the other things on our list for today was to see the two churches that were raised after the hurricane. These were done without the modern tools that we have today. With each 1 inch raise the workers had to make sure that the buildings were completely level else they crack in the middle. I can’t even wrap my head around how painstakingly slow that must have been.

While crouching down to take this picture the wind blew me over right onto my butt. Slightly embarrassing, but extremely funny.

We were getting hungry again and decided to find a place to have happy hour. That is one thing about Galveston, it has some fabulous happy hours.

We were a little hesitant to try The Spot. It’s several venues in one and looked a little like a tourist trap. Boy were we wrong. It’s privately owned and is fantastic. It became our favorite place to hang out. We decided on the 21 and over Rum Room.

We ordered fried pickles and diablo shrimp. Both were amazing. The servers were so incredibly nice. The drink prices were so cheap. I had two Pina Coladas which makes 5 if you are keeping track. We chatted with a server that grew up in my hometown so that was fun. We ended up spending the rest of the afternoon here.

I will say that having rich alcoholic drinks in a body not used to either creates quite the “I’ve swallowed a bowling ball” effect. We went back to our Airbnb so I could take a nap. Unfortunately while I slept, Donny was stuck inside because he didn’t know the codes to the doors and couldn’t get back in if he would have left. Luckily I didn’t take a super long nap and I was ready for our nightly walk on the sea wall when I woke up.

Did I mention just how perfect the weather was?