A prospecting trip in Texas & Mexico City
19/07/2008

Staff from Martin Randall Travel are continually travelling - whether prospecting for potential tours in the future or revising and improving arrangements (transport, accommodation, museums and concert venues, local guides, restaurants and general lie of the land) for existing tours.

Below is Deputy Managing Director Fiona Urquhart's account of her recent prospecting trip to Texas and Mexico City, researching for a forthcoming tour, due to take place in 2010.


Barack and Hillary precede me to Dallas Fort Worth Airport today. My campaign is not for the Presidency but to research architecture and art collections for possible future tours. I am greeted by a dazzling blue sky and Cheryl from the Convention Bureau, who giggles all the way to the car; she had been expecting someone older. This is but one of the misunderstandings which have dogged our dealings with the authorities here. For my day of arrival they had planned a string of visits and dinner, culminating in ‘Billy Bob’s Texas Honky-Tonk’ (which actually I would have loved), but by my clock it was already 10.00pm when leaving the airport; bedtime.

Fort Worth
I begin with a meeting with the Director of Tourism. By 9.30am I’m outside the Kimbell Art Museum (Louis Kahn, 1972, right) relieved to find that the nine-hour flight was worth it: wonderful building, stunning collection. Good meeting with the PR manager here and discussions for allowing our group behind-the-scenes access. Across the road is Tadao Ando’s The Modern.

Spirits lift further still. Ricardo Legorreta’s new Science museum has a way to go but is apparently on course for its 2009 opening. To the ‘no’ pile I add the long-horn cattle drive, the Cowgirl Museum – and Billy Bob.

Dallas
A brilliant day. I whisk around the Nasher Sculpture Center (Renzo Piano, 2002) and the superb Museum of Art. Lunch follows with the Tourism Director for Dallas who can hardly contain his excitement at the prospect of our tour. Until now, he says, cultural tourism has focused on the assassination of JFK.

By autumn 2009 the Rem Koolhaas theatre and Norman Foster opera house should be complete, sitting alongside I.M. Pei’s (only) concert hall. And in terms of residential work: Antoine Predock, Richard Meier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson. Dallas has a wealthy belt to rival Beverley
Hills. Lone hilarity sets in at midnight on discovering my palatial suite at the Adolphus; shame I will only be in it for six hours.

From Dallas to Marfa (by plane and car)
At the airport I am much taken by the announcements to ‘thank our military personnel for their service overseas’ and to witness passengers buying soldiers breakfast. I fly to El Paso, right out west on the Mexican border. From here a three-hour drive through the Chihuahan desert. My Mexican driver Marta
and I comment at intervals on the near nothingness around us and let the country and western blare.

Marfa is small (population 2,000), dusty, undistinguished and laden with western charm. In apposite contrast, it also has the Chinati Foundation, Donald Judd’s art installation in a former military base. I am
captivated. Further sophistication emerges in the excellent bookshop where I am welcomed into a party celebrating the re-election of the county attorney, and when sizing up the hotel across the street I am greeted by the owner with a glass of champagne and swept into a gathering celebrating a Marfa
photographer.

Back east to Houston
Renzo Piano’s building for the Menil Collection (right)  I love, not only for its understated simplicity and use of cypress, but its setting – in residential Montrose amid verandah-clad houses and gardens. Patrick, the bookstore manager, looks up as I enter and immediately recognises me from Marfa. Texas is large, but its contemporary art world clearly is not.

Sunday evening and I don’t feel like another dinner alone. Wandering the deserted streets of Downtown I have a most serendipitous encounter with a jamming session in a make-shift blues bar. A couple of Budweisers later I have an entire circle of Texan friends.

The next day, torrential rain. The only umbrella I can find is a lurid blue and orange number from the Science Museum Shop, depicting the solar system. Concierge staff at the Hotel ZaZa are amused. I am not totally convinced by the hotel and its avant-garde pretensions, but compared to the display of ineptitude at the hotel I am staying in (unwanted wake-up call at 5.00am, unordered room-service at
6.30am, previous occupant’s sushi in minibar, lifts activated by room keys which consistently fail to activate) I feel satisfied that this is good enough.

San Antonio
Coming here was always a bit of a long-shot. The conservatory by Emilio Ambasz in the botanical gardens and the McNay Art Museum are not sufficiently compelling to merit the detour. I am sceptical too of the parallels drawn with San Francisco and Boston and it is with some relief that I board the final flight of the night to Mexico City.

Mexico City
Everything has moved up a gear. Even in my hotel I can feel the energy. The director of the Casa Luis Barragán is delightful. She quickly understands what I need f rom her and I leave an hour later full of optimism. With a brilliant driver and a hefty street atlas I gradually pick off the numerous Barragán buildings: the convent in Tlalpán where a teeny nun shows me round and feeds me biscuits, the stables in
Los Clubes where we sneak through security, private houses tucked away in leafy suburbs.

I have fallen for Mexico City. Nobody had prepared me for the beauty of it, for the parks, birdsong, colour and vibrancy. Service is excellent in hotels and restaurants – and people smile. Texas lived up to
expectation; this place has surpassed it.

My final visit is to a contemporary art collection assembled by the family who own Mexico’s largest fruit juice manufacturer. The installations are in a warehouse on the most unprepossessing strip of industrial land on the city periphery. For the umpteenth time I feel that twinge of happening across something
special. I leave for the airport content.

London
Sleet, wind, 3 degrees Celsius and Heathrow: the usual cheery welcome home.


If you are interested in hearing more about our tour to Texas and Mexico City (27th March–9 April 2010), please contact us to register for advance information.