New Year's Day

New Year's Day started pretty slowly - I don't think we made it out of the condo until after noon. Our main sight-seeing destination for the day with the LBJ Presidential Museum. I mis-estimated the distance to the museum a bit, so our short walk turned into a fairly serious 2+ mile hike.

On the bright side, the museum was really good. It's interesting because it's so specific to the president's life, the current events at the time he was in office, and his own personal feelings and writings. In his writings you could see his awareness and frustration that his administration was going to known for the Vietnam War and not for the domestic legislation that he was focused on. The difficulty and personal conflict of being the president and deciding what to do with regard to the war.

One exhibit included an animatronic LBJ telling jokes and stories. He was pretty funny.

I also really liked this exhibit, which included letters and pictures sent to the president.

My favorite was this letter.

After seeing the museum, we walked past the Capitol, which is the largest State Capitol building in the country.

By this time we were on a fairly desperate quest for food, but almost everything seemed to be closed. Luckily we spotted a happy hour at McCormick and Smick's, which had a bunch of things (hummus, spinach and artichoke dip, wings, burgers, etc.) ranging from $2 to $5 each. We ordered a lot of them.

After what turned out to be dinner, we took a walk on South Congress street, to the area called 'SoCo', which was cute and had little restaurants and boutiques, though most were closed or closing by the time we got there.

In the evening we crashed at home, watched 'How to Steal a Million' and ordered a bunch of pizza.