I've been to Texas!

Last weekend, Thursday to Monday, I flew to Austin to sightsee with Peter after his business finished in San Antonio. My first real adventure, after driving the hour from Austin to San Antonio surrounded by pickup trucks (not unlike Alberta!), was to visit four of the five missions of the San Antonio Missions National Historic Park. The sites are beautiful, even though according to the interpretive signs the Indians were darn lucky those priests showed up. Hunting and Gathering was clearly getting them nowhere. Austin itself is an entertaining town, and although it bills itself as the 'live music capital of the world,' we approached it more like the 'tasty food capital of Texas.' There was (hormone free!) barbecue at Ruby's, migas and breakfast tortillas at Las Manitas and Trudy's, interior Mexican mole and enchiladas at Curras, and deliciousness from the on-site garden at the Eastside Cafe. While not eating, we baked in the sun at the Austin park festival's "Flugtag," in which teams of weirdos threw themselved off a 30-foot high ramp into a river with homemade flying machines. My favourite was definitely the hot-dog themed one where a guy dressed up as a wiener went flailing away from the bun, tray, mustard, and ketchup alone into the water. Obviously, none of the entrants really planned to "fly."

Finally, an interesting thing about Texans is their obsession with the geographical shape of their state. I was thrilled to find this Texas-shaped waffle iron in the breakfast buffet at our San Antonio Hotel, and even more thrilled to devour a little, crispy, golden Texas.


(and, for those legions of you who apparently want to buy a Texas-shaped waffle iron, we stayed at a Residence Inn. Call them to ask where they got it.)