San Antonio

On our last full day in Texas, we went on a day trip to San Antonio. We started the day by seeing the Alamo, which was interesting, and about like I remembered it from my visit in 5th grade. Although, when I went then I watched a much sadder movie about it, which we didn't see this time.

From the Alamo, it was a quick walk to the River Walk, which is actually a really pretty area. We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant right on the river and then attempted to walk in a little loop, but somehow kept hitting dead-ends.

On the way home we stopped at Dry Comal Creek Vineyard to do a wine tasting. Apparently Texas wine country is near Austin, so there were a bunch of vineyards we could have visited. Neera had never done a wine tasting, so we thought it'd be worth a try. The owner of the vineyard actually ended up pouring for our tasting, which was pretty cool. There are about 15 wines included in the tasting - it was a good thing we decided to share instead of each getting our own tasting.

As it was, we were pretty ready for a nap by the time it was all over.

For our last night dinner, we got dressed up and went to a semi-fancy restaurant near our condo. The food was really very good, except for the risotto, which was a bit salty, but that didn't seem so bad when the waiter brought us free cookies to make up for it.

Overall, the weekend was a lot of fun. As always, it was great to see Neera and Janet, and this time Shreyas and Dan. They're all really interesting and intelligent people and just really great to be around.

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.

New Year's Eve

Thursday we New Year's Eve, and we started the day by going to the Alamo Drafthouse - it's a movie theater where every other row of seats was removed and replaced with tables, so you can order food during the movie (and they serve beer, too). The model has spread around the U.S., but the Austin location is the original. We saw Avatar in 3D (the second time I'd seen it.) I had some hot wings and a burger with my movie. Everyone enjoyed the movie (though to varying degrees) - Neera mentioned that it's kind of like Pocahontas, but blue, which is fairly accurate.

From there, we went to the flagship Whole Foods store - it's something like 17,000 square feet of Whole Foods grocery store. We got some champagne for that night, some wine and cheese, breakfast foods, and other snacks.

After the groceries were put away at home, we checked out a parade that was going right near our house. It was a little odd and pretty short, so when it was done we had free time before dinner.

There was a blue moon on New Year's Eve (the second full moon in a calendar month) - and it looked pretty cool with all the clouds.

It was getting pretty chilly, so we stopped for a drink on the way to the restaurant.

The bar was off the beaten path and had a cute pub-like atmosphere. It was called the Ginger Man Bar.

We had Thai food for dinner - the restaurant was excellent, though I'm blanking on the name at the moment. I had some great mushroom and tofu soup in spicy coconut sauce. After Thai, we stopped home for wine and cheese (and coffee).

Around 11:15 we walked across the Colorado River to see some live music and fireworks, which were being set off over the river as part of Austin's New Year's festival.

The fireworks were good and went on a long time.

After fireworks, we went home, had some champagne, and ended up chatting about everything from science education, to health care, to movies until about four in the morning. It was a great way to start the new year.

Fourth Annual Girl's Trip (+Boys)

Every year I plan a trip to get together with two of my good friends from college - Neera and Janet - because we live in completely different parts of the country, and if we didn't plan a trip, we'd probably never all be in the same place. This year (our 4th get together), we decided to bring along our significant others, so that the guys could meet each other and we could spend some time making sure everybody really gets to know each other.

Based on lots of email discussions, analysis of flight prices, and randomness, we decided to get together for a New Year's Eve long-weekend in Austin, Texas. We rented a fairly big condo downtown, which was really nice, because we could cook food in the kitchen and have a living room to hang out in together. Plus its much cheaper than getting multiple hotel rooms. (In general, it's a great travel tip - almost every city offers rentals, and they're usually a lot cheaper than hotels - especially for longer stays or larger groups.)

We all got in on Wed. Dec. 30th, met up at the airport, rented a van, and found our condo. Despite some initial trepidation about actually finding the keys, entry, etc., everything went pretty smoothly.

By the time we got in we were all starving, so we went on a walk to find food. We came across a place called Manuels on South Congress Street, which had great Mexican food. After dinner, we did a little walking tour of 6th Street - which is a major night-life area in Austin. Austin is the 'Live Music Capital of the World' so it was fun to walk along and hear the different bands playing in each place.