Y’all. We really haven’t done much here in Austin. I know there are a million beautiful places to see, lakes to walk around, music to listen to, bars to visit, etc. in this fine city, but we just haven’t been motivated to leave our perfect little airbnb much at all. I mean, look at it again. Would you want to leave?

Here’s a view of the whole length of the place from the lamp side of the bed, but you’ll have to excuse all of our stuff all over it.

For the record, there’s a TON of shabby chic decor in here, so we’re ever so slightly less messy than you think. But anyway, our gracious and perfect hostess left us this:

Notice the handwritten note on flowery stationary making sure we know that there are chilled beer mugs in the freezer. And the little bottle of half and half. In the eternal words of Bette Midler when she discovered swan-shaped soap in the bathroom of her Plaza hotel room in Big Business, “Could you die?” You’ll have to imagine the thick southern drawl. Now that I’m thinking of it, that’s a pretty random movie to have been one of my favorites growing up. I can quote the whole thing. Bring me a higher love, doo-doo-doo-doo-doodoo! Please text me if you have any idea what I’m talking about.

Last night we had a nice dinner at a place called Fabi + Rosi, where I finally got a lovely salad – not much fresh food on the road – and some fried green tomatoes with fresh mozzarella, basil, and lemon olive oil. Eric had schnitzel, which was actually quite good. I had always thought schnitzel was a sausage of some sort, but Eric sorted me out last night. Well, sort of. He told me schnitzel actually meant “fried.” That’s absolutely untrue, if Google is to be believed. It means “slice.” Either way, it’s a slice of fried meat.

We had another lazy morning today, watching not one, but TWO bad movies – really, Matt Damon? A white guy saved the Chinese in The Great Wall? And that’s not even the worst part. I almost find the whole green-monsters-attacking-China plot to be more offensive than the whole white savior thing. It’s bad. The second bad movie wasn’t AS bad…some CIA action thing that doesn’t really need to have its own title because it’s just like all the others that you’ve seen.

We spent some time out in the giant yard letting Waffles & Addie run around and play with the kids. The mother of our hostess was out with the kids, and we got some background from her. She is Norwegian – hence all the beautiful blonde children running around – and has four adult children. Three of the four have each had four children of their own. The daughter that doesn’t already live here is moving here tomorrow, so then there will be even MORE cousins around! It’s been cool to see how this house seems to be the meeting point for a ton of kids, from age 5 up through high school. It seems like lots of fun, especially with lots of room to run around, half of a bball court with some cool kind of rubber floor, multiple swings and rope ladders hanging from trees, a pond (albeit a gross one), a playhouse, and tons of patio furniture.

When we finally got going for the day (afternoon), we headed to Covert Park at Mount Bonnell. A short hike up maybe 200 steps leads you to some beautiful views of the Colorado River (who knew that went through TX? Jeez, geography was not important at my schools!) and of the Austin skyline.

After that, we headed over to the HOPE Outdoor Gallery, which is a huge…um…I guess the remains of some oddly designed building? It’s lots of walls on multiple levels, and anyone can spraypaint whatever they want on it. It’s pretty cool because it’s constantly changing. Today was beautiful, so there were a ton of kids all over the place – painting, hanging out, taking and posing for photos. Seems like a great idea for a city to have.

Eric told me “I’m done with pictures” after I took the above one of him, so I knew it was time to find food. We walked down the street to this little walk-up window of a Mexican restaurant called Fresa’s (why strawberries, I don’t know…) and ordered bowls of rice, adobe lime chicken, avocado, kale, black beans, and queso fresco. Eric ordered the chips and salsa, and it was not your mama’s salsa. This stuff REAKED of garlic. Generally a good thing for me, but I wasn’t so sure about it in this context. It was a brown salsa too. Definitely different. I enjoyed a sandía/watermelon water that was fabulous and refreshing.

We then drove past the big “Greetings from Austin” wall – photo at top of this post.

Next, it was on to this crazy antique store called “Uncommon Objects.” Dude, it was…A LOT. We saw dead animals of every kind: elk, wolf, warthog, bees, alligator…I just asked Eric what else, and he just replied “Yep.” OH! A bear!! A big bear! They kinda grouped things by color because there just didn’t seem to be any other way to organize all of this junk. Oh, and the belt buckles! This is Texas, so you can imagine. Old furniture of every kind that had long passed the shabby chic decades of its life, old photos of who-know’s-whose grandfather in his army uniform, a painting of a family sitting in a living room looking out the window at a triceratops, gross gross gross old plush rocking horses, oh jeez….the horror. Most everything in there grossed me out a little. On the other hand, it would be a great way to work on your memory. Go in and look around for ten minutes, then list as many weird things that you could remember seeing. I think I’ve already blocked it out a bit.

We loaded up the car when we got back home. The plan is to leave “stupid early” (an Eric quote….like I really have to explain) because we have a long day ahead of ourselves tomorrow. We’ll drive an hour or so to San Antonio, see the Alamo and Riverwalk, then drive another eight hours across the rest of Texas before stopping for the night just on the New Mexico side of El Paso. And there is NOTHING between San Antonio and El Paso. As in, not a single town that Google thinks is worth naming. Okay, maybe a single town. But it’s bad. We did, however, find a website that lists all of the restaurants, gas stations, and hotels at each exit on Interstate 10, so there’s that.

I’d like to take one minute to point out that when we entered Texas the other day, we were at something like Exit 880. As in, we are driving a total of 880 miles across this state. Highest exit number on any interstate in Northern America. It’s HUGE!

And it’s so true what they say, “Everything’s bigger in Texas.” The Anthropologie is palatial. We stressed out over how big the Whole Foods was. At one point Eric put his hand on my shoulder and was shocked at how tense I was. I just wanted to find yogurt! Y’all, the olive bar was probably 25 feet long. I’m in heaven. Also, we just learned that when we were driving into Houston the other day, we were on a road that had 26 lanes. 26! Apparently, there’s a wider one in China at a toll plaza, but oh my gosh. I tried to take a picture for y’all, but the iphone just couldn’t do it justice. And everyone is driving a giant truck. At 85 miles per hour. Seriously, Eric was on a road to his BBQ place where the speed limit was 85 mph. We looked it up, and this is the only place in the country with that high of a limit. Crazy.

So yeah, after talking about how huge this place is, we’re going to attempt to drive out of it tomorrow. Wish us luck. Hopefully by nightfall, my dogs will be running around in their very own corral!