(updated on 7/9 with pics from my cell phone)
Well.....I'm back from my Austin Texas vacation!!!!!!
the first day down (tuesday - june 28th) was just relaxation (ahhhhhhh) . We ate out, went swimming and then headed down to the bars along 6th street....I even came in 5th place in a poker tournament (well, randy came in 2nd...but it's my blog - so 5th place is just as exciting). Later on in the evening we hit a bar with a band who let you karoke in with them while they played punk or metal. What else???? Oh yeah & switched rooms. We wanted a fridge in our room, so we went up to the front desk and sine it was a tuesday afternoon, they upgraded us to a "suite" for no extra charge. Actually, it really was just a room with a fridge (haha)
Day two (Wed) I had a 10am appt with a headhunter. It went pretty well considering I fogot to bring a resume with me.
Next we went to lunch at TGIF and then we began walking around the east side (crossed over at the congress st bridge).
I was DYING of heat exhaustion. They might say that austin has "dry heat", but let me tell you - when it's 102 degrees outside, I don't care how dry it it....IT'S HOT!!!
On thursday ....hmmmm what did we do on thurs?????
OH YEAH - we met up with a real estate agent who showed us over a dozen homes in the LAKEWAY and WESTLAKE neighborhoods. One house really blew us away for under $300k - the home is close to 3000sf on .45acre of property and had a master bath larger then my current bedroom!!!!! Basically we're talking over a $750k home in jersey. We were drooling and ALMOST put a good faith deposit down right on the spot, but then I thought about it.....don't jump the gun without a safety net of a job.
btw....we're STILL thinking about the house :)
Friday we headed out to a property developer - Steiner Ranch which is located smack dab btwn Lakeway and Westlake Hills. It is an awesome brand new community with everything. The only thing that concerns Randy is that there might be too many strict rules of "cannot do" in this community. I dunno - I love the way the homes are set up....really really beautiful!
Oh - for lunch we visited Carlos & Charlie's and for dinner we visited Johnny Fin's (we were there for like 4 hrs!!!!!). Both are awesome marina bar/restaurants on Lake Travis that you can drive your boat right up to :)
On Saturday we took a Duck Tour around downtown austin that dumped us into Lake Austin...literally. One of the funniest thing about the tour was that we passed a few golf courses and the bus would wait for the golfer to get ready to using his club and then our entire bus would QUACK (a really annoying sound....I have the quacker at home and I'm not afraid to use it!!!!)
That night we hit 6th street again and WENT NUTS!!! First we started the night off at a bar where we ordered this hurricane like drink in a 5 gallon margarita glass. Can't name all the liquor's in it...but it was sure yummy!!! I got pics to prove it!!!
Around 8:30pm we headed back to the Congress St Bridge to see the bats fly out....yup - got pics of that too!!!! Later on in the evening we saw a cabaret show called Esther's Follies. I got picked on but an insane comic/mime. One of the other comic's performing in the show was one of the flamming idiots (remeber them from the renn faire's????), so that tells you the nuttiness of the show. Later on we hit this awesome bar called Pete's Piano Bar ...it has a duel piano's - hysterical!!!!! No one prepared me for how crazy 6th street gets on the weekend, so I parked there earlier on in the day (for the duck tours), but at 2am it was impossible to leave - the streets were as crowed as Bourbon Street during mardi gras!!!
On Sunday we orig had plans to head to a water park, but I came down with a cold...so we slept in until noon and then we headed towards San Antonio. On the way we stopped to explore the Natural Bridge Cavern - really cool place, but with 99% humidity...at the end we were sweating!!!! First we visted the Alamo (whooo-hoooo)
and then we headed down to the River Walk in the heart of San Antonio. Ate at a joe's crab shack and had a really good time. Didn't stay out too late since we had an hour drive back to Austin.
On Monday (July 4th) we headed to the Schlitterbahn Water Park. We were soooooooo lucky that I felt crappy the day before, because we were told that all the rides had 3-4 hr wait lines. Not us....most rides were 15 minute waits (with 45 minutes being the longest). It was a great way to spend the day - except I burned the heck out of my feet (have I mentioned that austin is 102 degrees ALL DAY LONG!!!)
Flew home on Tuesday evening and headed back to work on Wed.
