Holy heck, this ice cream is the bomb. Next time any of you guys are in Austin, or where ever there is an Amy’s Ice Creams, you MUST get some.
Best Ice Cream, Best Service, Yummy!
Ryan and I tried the Peanut Butter and Oreo, never had better ice cream. Plus the people working there were awesome. Really funny and friendly. Yay for fun Texans and great treats. Since vacation is now officially over, we can’t indulge in such delights.
When’s the next vacation…!
Saturday, after picking up my new iPhone 3G, Ryan, my dad and I met up with my mom at the Valencia Hotel on the Riverwalk. From the hotel we walked down to the water to get some tapas. They were tasty and the view was great. I had not been to the Riverwalk in quite some time.
After the snack we took a stroll down to the Alamo and other similar sites.
We've Certainly Got Direction
We passed my great grandfather’s pharmacy and the old zoo that was indoors, like in a building downtown… how crazy. If the bears got loose… holy shit!
The Alamo
Ryan and I
The Alamo from the back
My grandmother and I went to Austin on Friday to pick Ryan up from the airport. We had a scare as he nearly missed the flight out of Kansas city but he got in on time and with his bags, whew, what a relief.
From the airport we went to Moonshine, a great restaurant in Austin. We shared a large selection of appetizers from spinach and artichoke fondue to grilled garlic cloves to polenta. It was all so very tasty.
After lunch we drove to the capitol and around the downtown area before heading out of town, making one more stop at The Oasis on Lake Travis.
It is very hard to capture the immense size of The Oasis in one shot. It would probably require a few shots with my fish eye lens to accomplish that.
The Oasis is a restaurant on Lake Travis (as you might have surmised from the full name above). Only a few years ago the place burned down to the ground. Well the place has been rebuilt and the food improved and the view is every as stunning. The guy behind it all is a friend of my grandmother’s best friend. He’s a little tiny itsy bit rich. Check out his home, it’s that giant one. It looks like three homes, it’s one. Just so you know…
But like I said, the views are fabulous. The only thing possibly close to being as good are the drinks. Fun and funky margaritas and mixed drinks.
We had a few drinks, took a few pictures and then headed to Horseshoe Bay where my grandparents live.
So it was a great day, amazing food, amazing drinks and beautiful scenery.
Image via WikipediaI have always loved to travel. Being able to put out a couple hundred dollars and travel across the country is awesome to me, and I’ve done it more than many people my age. I have been flying since I was a little child from my yearly voyage to California, to trips to Europe, the Caribbean and Hawaii, to more continental trips to Missouri, Texas, Washington DC, Florida, Massachusetts, Georgia, Arizona, Tennessee…
I’ve been to pretty much every state, take the Dakotas, Montana, Alaska and Maine.
Today was the first time I’ve really been a prissy little bitch while traveling.
The plan was that I would take the MoExpress shuttle to St. Louis, fly to Baltimore/Washington International, have dinner with my best friend of all time Landon during my four hour layover and then finish my flight to Raleigh North Carolina where I would meet my grandmother and then head to our hotel to prepare for our presentation tomorrow night.
Well, I did take MoExpress. I sat next to a guy stuffing his face full of McDonalds and taking up a good portion of my seat doing it. Behind me there was a guy eating a ten piece fried chicken bucket with biscuits and gravy. Oh, don’t forget the woman who some how managed to get actual movie theater popcorn at 10:30 in the morning. Not a small bag, we are talking the refillable plastic bucket. Finally there was the kid who had two trays of Chinese food, which he ate solo.
Missouri is sloppy state.
We arrive at the airport as scheduled at 12:30pm, I went through security without any trouble and declared sanctuary.
Too soon.
My flight is delayed 30 minutes. I decided to take this extra time and explore the airport terminal. To my surprise, the E terminal now connected to the D terminal, and so on all the way to A. This is a new thing. Southwest’s terminal has always sat as it’s own with no connection to the other terminals beyond using a shuttle.
I walk, and walk, and walk. There are half mile markers through the terminal. I guess the city of Saint Louis is trying to remove the negative health stigma attached to the state?
I walk all the way to terminal A, find nothing too exciting and head back to terminal E.
At The Great American Bagel and Bakery I order a veggie sandwich on an asiago bagel.
“That’ll be an extra $0.99 you know”
“Yes I understand that”
“What do you want again? Turkey?”
“Veggie on asiago”
“Oh, yeah. The asiago is an extra $0.99”
“Yes, that’s what I hear”
“What would you like on it?”
“Well, what veggies do you have?” (they don’t show the makings of the sandwich which makes me a bit nervous)
Pointing to her right, “Look at “Condiments”
I look to her left, where I see “Condiments”. Is lettuce a condiment? Ok, I bite, “Lettuce, tomato, red onion, cucumber, peppers and light mayo”.
“Want cheese?”
“Yes, provolone”
“Alright, do you want any cheese?”
“Yes… provolone”
“Oh, yeah.”
It’s over $9.00 for this sandwich. I hand her my debit card as a man walks up and says, “I need a large coffee”.
The register attendant cancels the transaction to process his coffee order. Mind you, there is a line about ten deep behind me and this bloke walks up and cuts in front of us all, and she cancels my transaction for a $2.50 cup of coffee.
Then she picks up the phone, apparently “Char-ease” has called in sick, again.
“Oh no! You tell Char-ease she can’t be calling in again. She called in yesterday, no way, nuh uh.”
This continues, my transaction is processed. I leave, unwrap my bagel and am met with one piece of lettuce, two anemic tomato slices and vinegar. So that’s how the sandwich got so greasy, the oil and vinegar she poured all over it. Did I order that? No.
So I took apart the sandwich and treated it as a half side salad with stale asiago bread on the side.
Needless to say it wasn’t very good and it definitely wasn’t worth $9.00+. I would have been better off getting the caesar salad from Wolfgang Puck for $8.99 in the other terminal. Lesson learned.
I get to the gate, flight delayed another ten minutes.
Flight delayed another 30 minutes.
Flight has arrived… ? Huh? It was at least forty minutes away and now, magically, it is here. We board the flight.
We sit on the the runway 20 minutes. We start to take off, we stop. We sit on the runway 30 minutes. We return to the gate where we deplane and I plug in my laptop to charge a bit more.
The air traffic controllers in Baltimore are saying there is at least another hour before we can take off so I get myself comfortable, cancel my plans with Landon and hop onto the internet.
Ten minutes later they are calling us back onto the plane. So much for an hour, but I won’t complain.
We get back on the plane. We sit on the runway. We sit some more. We finally take off.
During the entire thing, everyone kept a positive attitude, thank the lord. I mean, I was pessimistic and bitchy and pissy but I made sure to keep that to myself. The flight attendants were so nice, the pilot kept us up to date as best he could and gate workers did their best to keep us comfortable with the entire situation.
That is why I love Southwest Airlines. They put customer service as a top priority and had this been another airline, I am certain there would have been some pretty vocal people on the plane.
I only wish they had Midwest Airline’s cookies. Never ending supply of warm cookies would keep any Missourian happy, especially the ones I met today. Holy shit.
UPDATE:
We have
It seems like every week I’m flying out somewhere or otherwise taking a trip out of town.
Texas, Birmingham, Chicago, Kansas City, Saint Louis, San Francisco… This Monday I’m flying out to Raleigh North Carolina and giving a presentation to the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission and then Ryan will join me in Texas to spend a long weekend with my grandmother and grandfather at their home there outside of Austin.
I am really excited/nervous about the trip to Texas. This is the first time that I have really integrated a boyfriend in my family life. I have always wanted to do so with my past boyfriends (namely, only, Landon and Geoffrey) but a mixture of my fear and my family’s obvious distaste for that quelched any chances of something like this.
However, my family seems to just love Ryan, a lot. I mean, why not? He’s smart, funny, loving, cute, incredibly diligent, charming and so kind. He has helped me grow and feel comfortable in my skin. He is such a light in my life and my family must see that. He emails back and forth with my grandmother and my parents ask about him everytime we talk on the phone. How great is that?
So anyways, going to be busy traveling but it will be a lot of fun and let’s be honest, getting out of Columbia is about the best thing one can do in the summer!
Ryan and I decided to go the “green” route home from Chicago and took the new Megabus from Union Station to Union Station.
The bus was brand new, clean and pleasant. Nothing like the China Bus Ryan and I took to New York City from Washington DC. Nothing like that haha.
I would say that the Megabus is aimed at college students more than anyone else. You must make your reservations online which not only cuts costs but consequently prevents “bums” from getting on board. You have to have access to a computer with an internet connection and a credit card to make the reservation. I guess this is a good idea, maybe I just don’t have an opinion on it. I fear sounding elitist by saying it was nice to not have sketchy people on the seat across from you, that sounds bad so let’s just pretend I never typed it, k?
One interesting dynamic, a bit of Rosa Parks perhaps… The bottom floor of the double decker bus was inhabited by white middle to upper middle class girls. Not a boy or non-caucasian in sight. Go up the stairs and 90% black girls. There was one older Greek woman, two Asian boys and the two of us.
I guess the minorities were forced upstairs, no matter what minority you were in haha. The upstairs was nice though, more seats and a fantastic view, the downstairs has some seats facing other seats with a table in between. Magnificent! Next time we go we are going to take those seats so we can chit chat with others and play Blackjack or something. We played together, I won Blackjack but Ryan kicked my ASS in a game of War.
We made our first and unnecessary stop in Normal Illinois. The passenger we were waiting on never showed, boo to that.
Our second stop was at a truckstop/laundro-mat/restaurant/arcade/store… It was all sorts of white trash.
What more could you ask for? How about really fucking scary dolls?
Not enough? How about some “turn from sin, turn to Christ” cassette tapes. Yes, you read that right, cassettes.
One guy from the bus took of the boxes of tapes to the bus. The entire box. Lord only knows what he plans to do with them (pun not totally intended).
The entire place was pretty hilarious. I understand that truckers need a place to chill when on the road, a place to escape to outside of their trucks… But why does the place have to be so trashy?
The “Lounge” consisted of a couple of cheap metal chairs, a 19″ color television broadcasting the cliche Nascar race of the day and some neon lights of various colors hung haphazardly on the wall.
The smell was something else, wow.
We were given about thirty minutes to hang out there, get lunch at one of the nearby fast food establishments and just stretch out legs.
Of course, as with any stop, there has to be a few stupid people that disregard the time constraints. I swear, how do these people get through life? Three girls were left behind at Subway until someone yelled from upstairs to the downstairs of the girls running behind the bus a good fifty yards back.
Hilarious? Yes. Would I have liked for them to run an extra 100 yards? Of course.
We got into St. Louis despite the acts of God going on around us. The storms were so strong that they were pushing the bus between two different lanes. We got home safe and sound and then crashed, poor Ryan had to be at work five hours later!
All and all, I will definitely take the Megabus again, hopefully pretty soon!
I am here in Birmingham Alabama to do a photoshoot with the Taste of the South Magazine and the National Sweet Potato Commission. Right now I am sitting at a two story Starbucks in their old downtown.
As the plane made its rough, really rough, landing, and as I looked out of the window to what would surely be the city I would die in (I swear we all thought the plane was going down) and took a look at my final destination, I had a revelation.
I love Birmingham. Right now, after spending a few hours in the old downtown and just really falling in love with the old downtown, I am just certain that I need to live here. I even picked out an apartment for Ryan and I with it’s own Bar/Restaurant on the ground floor. How sexy is that? I have even planned out our lives here. Oh my!
I had dinner at this awesome restaurant/bar that had all sorts of fun food and lots of veggie foods… Great wine selection of which I had the Bacarro Pinot Grigio. I also passed probably 10 gay people so far, which is not what I expected for a city in Alabama. They rank 47th in hate crimes based on sexual orientation and 50th in overall hate crimes! Awesome (unless I’m reading the statistics backwards…
Look at that adorable fountain. Oh this is lust at first visit. Below is my new church… haha, well it is a Methodist church!
I’m sorry that I’m stuck using my iPhone to take the pics, with it’s new broken camera. I didn’t want to walk around town with my camera bag, but if the weather is nice tomorrow, I certainly will.
What do you think about Birmingham? hmm? Can I convince Ryan to move here? haha, not likely. Cost of living is 4.8% lower and income is 2.5% higher. How awesome is that?
So far Chase, Ryan and Landon think I’m crazy.
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This is the first time for me to come back to Houston and not hang out with high school friends. It seems that I have reached the point in my life where old friends have become forgotten friends. I spend my time with my family and alone doing work instead of prowling the town into the late wee hours of the morning.
I was just here in March for Spring Break and my Lasik surgery and even then I had friends with whom I got to enjoy my time here. It is amazing to me how quickly our lives change and how few of my former high school classmates have decided to stay in Houston, or even Texas altogether.
It isn’t just my high school friends either. My friends from Mizzou seem to be moving to the coasts, primarily San Francisco and New York City/Washington DC.
And coincidently, or perhaps not, right now Ryan and I are planning our escape and what are the two top places on our list? San Francisco (the bay area) and Washington DC.
What is that draws us all so far from the Midwest? What is so undesirable? The east and west coasts are significantly more expensive and the job market is much more competitive, especially for college graduates. Housing is up to ten times more expensive on average and crime is up.
We sacrifice security, cheap housing and our set of wheels for these destinations and what’s more? We stay there! This isn’t a vacation. On top of that, we recruit. I can’t count the number of people that moved to San Francisco after I did.
Alas, until Ryan and I pack our things and move to the coasts of California or the Capitol City, we will be rehearsing our goodbyes as our dwindling number of friends continue to venture out of Middle America for the cities with the power to make, or crush dreams.
Tags: Friends, Landon, Midwest, Money, Moving, Politics, Ryan, Travel, Washington DCSo. I had an absolute blast in Boston. I do believe I will have to add it to the list of places I want to live, if not only for the warmer months. Then off to New York. Oh New York… I can’t decide if I’m going to move to New York or to San Francisco. It’s a tough call.
I went to B&H Photography today and looked at some fun lenses and got a remote control for my camera, then to H&M and some new shirts. Yay! We had some authenic New York pizza and some Starbucks and some roasted nuts and… We have been eating way way too much. I think Landon and I both will need a few day fast… yikes
Now we are on our way back to Washinton DC. We are going to be entertaining a french gal named Audrey. She is couch surfing.
Oh and hostels = awesome. We stayed at one in Boston, I’m in love. We ever went pub crawling with them, yay!
Ok, this bus is kinda squished to be typing too much. Tomorrow I promise a better update wrought full of pictures. I promise promise promise.
Much love!
Tags: Amazing, Boston, Fun, Hostel, Landon, New York, Starbucks, Travel, WashingtonWe are driving up the turnpike to Boston, it’s a good time. Landon and I are hitching a ride with his aunt and cousin, they are awesome, amazing… etc!
We have this Range Rover full to the brim with goodies and foods and… everything.
Gotta go! I will post pics later!
Tags: Amazing, Boston, Fun, Landon, Travel Loading ...
