Travelin' About

It's 108 degrees today in Austin and yet all my friends back East keep calling complaining about the heat. Weenies! Although I will admit that the heat here was one downfall of our visit to San Antonio. I am told that Christmastime is the best time to visit San Antonio, when it's festively decorated. Unfortunately now is when we are here and so, despite the heat, we made the 110 minute journey to see the famous Alamo, River Walk and some of the missions. As we drove through the downtown streets, in search of the missions, I was impressed with the Spanish architecture and really would love to go back and walk around downtown - it was quite an interesting place to explore. The missions themselves were not designed for tourists in the blazing sun. We stopped first at Mission San Jose´ "Queen of the Missions."  The chapel was under construction, but we did get a sense of the beautiful architecture, the size and the purpose of the Mission itself and we stumbled on a brid...

Guess that really should be "When in Austin..."  We've been here six weeks already and we really are falling in love with it, even despite the hottest summer on record. I have taken so many pictures of this colorful city, I'm trying to figure out what to do with them all. I'm contemplating writing a "Travel" article and pitching it to a magazine. It seems to me that when I ask Austinites where they came from, most seem to be transplants, but all seem to agree that they love it here. What's not to love? Great restaurants, outrageous music scene, colorful sights at every turn, lots of cool watering holes and beautiful flowers everywhere.  This week we headed to Juan in a Million for an outrageous brunch.  They offered a plate of their special blend of eggs, cheese, bacon and potatoes with FIVE taco shells for $3.60!!! That was two meals plus sharing for me! But it was oh so good. Then we headed to the University of Texas' Ransome Center where t...

Our trip to Texas to see if we can stand the heat had one wonderful purpose, Miss Charlotte Anne.   She's our very first Grandchild and every moment we get to spend with her is precious and so full of love. I've been blessed to have a fun city to run around and focus on while awaiting her birth. Now I have several hundred photos of her as well as a few thousand of the area that she will grow up in.  Austin is such a colorful, friendly and fun city, with wide walking and biking trails that loop around Lady Bird lake, passing through downtown as well as more suburban areas. Folks gather at night around the Congress Street bridge to see the largest urban bat population (1.5 million) fly out into the night to devour mosquitoes. Downtown statue. Crowd dispersing after viewing the bats flying south. Crowds gather on bridge and below to watch over a million bats come out. There really is a lot to see and do and eat in Austin - it is a very "user friendly" ...