Houston to Austin

Last night Josh noticed a notice in Matt's apartment building mentioning a free breakfast this morning! The three of us headed down to the gorgeous lobby and enjoyed free breakfast tacos, oatmeal, orange juice, fruit, and donuts. Things got a little awkward when the other residents started asking Josh and I if we were new to the building and where we worked... Josh told someone that I worked for Schlumberger and I just hoped that I didn't meet someone who actually did work for them! I think people were starting to catch on to our scam so we ate quickly and left.

We packed up the car, said goodbye to Matt, and decided to try biking around Houston one more time. This time we had a lot more success: we found the Buffalo Bayou trail which is a long stretch of paved road for runners and bikers next to a creek and surrounded by parks.

We also biked around Sam Houston Park, a really neat little historic village. There were about a dozen houses and cabins from the mid-1800's in the park, which was right downtown and surrounded by skyscrapers, the juxtaposition of old and new was pretty cool.

On our way to Austin, we stopped at Pleasant Hill Winery. The winery was very busy but to be honest, we found the wines not very good... extremely sweet to the point of almost undrinkable.

As we continued along to Austin we saw a sign for Saddlehorn Winery and decided to check it out. We spoke to the owner we learned that he was a retired engineer!! He had been making his own wine for about 11 years before he decided to retire and open his own winery; such a neat story!

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't very pleasant on our drive and it was raining when we got into Austin. We met our hosts, Camille and William at their cute duplex and also met Camille's mother who was playing with their daughter, Sophia.

Camille and William graduated from UT-Austin about six years ago where William actually majored in Aerospace Engineering! Now they both run a nonprofit related to music preservation; their interest in music was obvious from the moment they opened their front door, as an entire wall of their living room is covered in shelves of records!

After hanging out with them for a while we left Sophia with her grandmother and the four of us went out for Texas bar-b-que at Stubb's, a famous restaurant and music venue. William and Camille told us about their four-month National Park camping trip and their six-month adventure in Eastern Europe where they worked at a hostel in Turkey! It was so neat to listen to their crazy domestic and international journeys!

William and Camille headed home after dinner but Josh and I made our way to Austin's famous 6th Street, a road that has a ton of bars side by side for about a mile. Since Austin touts itself as the live music capital of the world, it was easy to find some live music to enjoy. We stopped at the Dizzy Rooster and had a few Texas beers before heading back to William and Camille's.

Josh and I shared the same high and low again today... our high was meeting William, Camille, and Sophia: they are such an adorable family with such amazing travel experiences and so many more adventures planned! Our low was the weather... I was really looking forward to biking around the UT-Austin campus. Josh's "ho" was meeting two engineers today! They are all over the world! My "ho" was pretending to be a full-timer for Schlumberger and getting worried that people would start asking specific questions... luckily we got out of there before anyone caught on!