Howdy y'all!
After months of thinking about it, Adam and I are finally in Texas.
We spent Sunday night in San Antonio at the gorgeous Hotel Valencia. We snagged our room for a song (thanks to Adam's savvy work on Priceline) and quite enjoyed the lux amenities: valet parking, cold aqua fresca, dark wood window shutters and a secret view of the lazy river.
Around dusk, we visited the legendary Los Alamos. The sky was spitting rain and hundreds of great-tailed grackles swooped overhead like screeching streaks of indigo ink. Afterward, we walked quickly through deserted streets to an incredible outdoor watering hole called The Friendly Spot. Here, dozens of tables fill a dusty yard and patrons line up at at a bar housed in an old ice house for cold draft and wine served in plastic cups. Dogs, kids, birds and fat gray squirrels share the playground equipment at the front of the property and a middle-aged Latino guy DJs from a laptop and a single speaker. Halfway through our drinks, we started talking about quitting our lives and moving to the South of France to open a cooking school, so I'd say the booze had the desired effect.
Come morning, it was still drizzling and so we ambled along San Antonio's famed 'river walk' to the Guenther
House (America's oldest working flour mill!). We were the youngest people there by about thirty years (further evidence, as if I needed any, that I am often drawn to activities that interest women mostly of my grandmothers' generation). The gift shop and cafe are housed in a beautiful nineteenth-century home at the front of the property and it turned out well, I guess, because I picked up a bag of sweet cream waffle mix for Sarah Minor while Adam sampled chocolate chunk cookie bars made from fresh milled flour.
Yesterday, we drove to Austin where the local slogan is
'Keep Austin weird." Our apartment is instantly comfortable, likely owing to its enviable design:
fourteen foot ceilings, a raised 'pod' bed and polished concrete floors. Our landlord is an artist and
furniture maker who lives upstairs and works in the giant warehouse
studio to which our apartment is attached. To my unending delight, there
are also three cats and a dog on the property. The friendly Siamese mix often ends up in our private pebbly courtyard, pestering me for food (cats know suckers when they see one).
So far, we're really digging the outdoor coffee houses (dogs [yay] & smoking [boo]
allowed), addictive fish tacos, abundant food trailers, overgrown agave plants, Spanish architecture and laid-back vibe. Not to mention gun stores that also 'process
deer,' butcher shops that sell ammo, girls wearing pretty dresses with serious
cowboy boots, art galleries proffering tattoos, barbershops that serve cold
beer while-you-wait and the
oddly cloudy sky holding back the coming heat of summer.
