Texas Fever

Houston was the first place on our trip that we had visited before in the spring of 2002 but this was going to be a lot different from our first visit as well as our friends Lynne and David we were also going to meet their 10 month old son Gabriel for the first time. They had also moved home and now live in a beautiful house that from the outside look's like something from the Walton's with it's wood panelling and the large family swing on the front porch but I don't remember the Waltons having a swimming pool in their back garden but I could be wrong. The inside of the house was also full of early 20th Century American charm and we were given our own room and bathroom, after Cancun the luxury just kept coming.


Gabriel was slightly surprised to see two new faces the next day but in no time at all he was all smiles as we played with him and all his toys. Anybody who has ever been to Houston will know that Car is King and it's almost impossible doing anything without one, so over the next two and a half weeks we very lucky to have two great chauffeurs who showed us all of Houston's highlights we had missed on our first visit and to many other places further a field.

Our first day was spent shopping for some new clothes as after 4 months hard wear on the dusty streets of South America and Mexico some of our threads were decidedly threadbare and some of Chris's just a little bit smelly. It started to rain so we went to a great tapas bar for lunch, the restaurants in Texas are so much more child friendly than back home with the staff bending over backwards to make sure you have anything you require. Houston hadn't had any rain in two and a half months until we arrived and certainly made up for it during our time there (Mr Reilly jinxes again!).

The following day we went to 'The Orange Show' built by Jeff McKissack. He was at heart an inventor and after being unsuccessful in being able to work alongside Thomas Edison he decided he would design the best orange juice extractor ever. He bought lorry loads of oranges and sold these on and made some money this way. He believed that oranges were such an important source of nutrition that he built his show about them and his orange squeezer would be the highlight. Unfortunately he felt that none of his designs were good enough and the show opened without this. It is a collection of various articles that he has picked up along the way, frogs, Santa’s son, tractor seats and steering wheels, engines and a various other things. There was a seated area for shows to be shown. He died 8 months after the show opened and his friends and family set up a trust to keep the show going. Nowadays it is also used as an exhibition space and as venue for plays, movies and bands, Bonnie Prince Billy and Daniel Johnson are two acts who have played the venue in the last year.

Thursday was spent looking for shoes...well you know what I am like...I absolutely hate it! We eventually found a huge place where both of us got new sandals and I got a new pair of flip flops (my trendies!!). There was a huge thunderstorm that afternoon and we tried to wait it out...but to no avail...Lynne drove us home whilst trying to avoid the many flooded areas we couldn’t drive through.

Friday lunchtime after David returned from work we headed off to hill country with our first stop being Lulling to sample the award winning BBQ in the City Market BBQ House. This place had it's own smoke room in the back where you ordered your meat by the pound and your sausages by the number whilst peering through the haze. Several pounds of brisket, spare ribs and 4 sausages were plunkt onto a couple of sheets of brown paper...this is also what we had for dinner plates. This food was delicious - honestly we ate and ate and washed it all down with bottles of Big Red which...looks like tizer but I can't describe what it tastes like but my eyes bulged and heart raced after a few mouthfuls. Three of us got a big red for the road...we tried to persuade Lynne & Gabriel but it wasn't to be.


We stopped off in Wimberley a quaint wee town where we wandered about the shops that looked like the Ingles store from the hit 70's TV show “Little House on the Prairie”before heading off to Luckenbach which allegedly has a population of 3. Luckenbach consists of a bar, gift shop and a few sheds but is famous for being where Willie Nelson and friends regularly come to jam a few tunes. We had a beer and chilled out while listening to a few good old boys strum some songs on their guitars before going to Fredericksburg which was the next stop on David's whistle stop tour to Austin through the Texas Hill Country. We went to a little German place called Aldorf and we had a beer and guess what...more sausages..they even had cheese ones...now Chris was delighted. As we headed back to the car we saw the weirdest thunderstorm ever, the lightning was in the clouds and the whole cloud lit up!


Saturday morning after breakfast we passed a drive-thru off licence (this seems to sum up the Texans attitude to drinking and driving) on our way to Enchanted Rock.
This was a huge granite rock which was held sacred by the indigenous tribes of the area and stands majestically above all the surrounding scenery and is now in the centre of a huge national reserve. We all walked up even Gabriel, to the top which took about an hour in the hot hot heat of the morning. We then headed back into Fredericksburg and had lunch in the Fredericksburg Brewery Company - now the speciality was Sausages...but as we were all sausaged out we decided just to have a sandwich and sampled one of the inhouse brews.


After lunch Lynne decided that it would be quite nice to take a sideways diversion via the Becker's vineyard, which is a personal favourite of some guy called George W Bush. After a few samples avoiding the merlot we sat and had a nice bottle of wine out on the beautiful patio before it was back in the SUV and back on the road to Austin.

After arriving in Austin and getting checked into our hotel room we went to a Mexican restaurant in the Congress area called Guerros which had better Mexican food than any we had tasted in last month or so in Mexico. We then had an invite to a party at Heid's (an artist friend of Lynne's) who lived in Austin. There was another Scottish girl now living in Austin there called Jude and we spent our time reminiscing about Irn Bru and Gregg's (well Jude had an apparent dislike of the counter assistants and Chris just dreamt of a Cheese pastie!). After leaving the party Lynne had to put Gabriel to bed so Chris, David & I went down into the centre of Austin for a couple of drinks in a sports bar.

We had planned to go for a dip in the Barton thermal springs but the rain put a kybosh on that idea so we opted to wander around the Texas State Capital Building instead and marvel at it's amazing dome. This building was rebuilt in the 1800’s due to a fire and is fairly impressive, it also has paintings of all the governors of Texas including some guy called Bush who quite liked the Becker's wine. We then went to a really cool restaurant called “Shady Grove”for lunch where we ate the hugest and bestest burger of all time. This place had a cool laid back friendly atmosphere and seemed to sum up the overall feel we got for Austin in our few days
there - Austin should be on your list of places to visit if you are ever in Texas.


After a quick look round Barton Springs before it was cleared due to a lightning warning it was back in the car back to Houston after a great weekend away.