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Published: August 8th 2011
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Texas! - by Jo
I have to admit that Texas wasn't one of the places that I was overly excited about. Whenever I pictured it in my head I just imagined a lot of boiling hot desert with cacti dotted about and hay bales blowing past. Well the heat part wasn't far from the truth, for the majority of the time we were there the temperature was well into the thirties, most days in the forties. The desert part is also probably true in some areas, but thankfully not in the parts that we went to. We started off in San Antonio, famous for the Alamo which served as home to missionaries during the Texas revolution. We paid it a visit on a particularly scorching day and mostly it was a relief to get inside where it was cool! But it was very interesting too, with lots of informative things to read and of course a highly tacky gift shop selling things like 'Alamo biscuits' and Davey Crocket mugs.
Our accommodation in San Antonio, I'm sorry to say was a Travelodge since there was very little available. We spent a lot of time in our air conditioned rooms, venturing
out from time to time into the town. The mall was our main port of call since again, it was cool, and really it was one of the only things to do. Rachael and I were very excited to get our hair cut there as after 4 months you can imagine that it was desperately in need of some maintenance. One part of the city that was very pretty was the Riverwalk, which was nestled in the shade of the trees alongside the river. It was lined with places to eat and drink, which we all took full advantage of of course. We found margaritas served in what can only be described as fish bowls, and delicious food that we ate at tables overlooking the water. Every so often a little tour boat would go past, filled with people looking very hot and bored as a poor guide talked for the hundredth time that day about the city of San Antonio. We were only there for a few days and after that we moved on to Dallas, well actually Fort Worth which is just outside of Dallas as that's where Natalie and Chris were flying home from. It was really
just a stopover and the only reason we were there was to be close to the airport, and after two days there we had the sad task of saying goodbye to Nat and Chris for another 9 weeks. It was strange when they'd left to be just the two of us again!
Our final destination in Texas was Austin, and it was wonderful! It was almost like a different state entirely - a bustling city full of bars, live music venues, parks and hostels. When we checked into our hostel it felt great to be back amongst other travellers, because we hadn't actually met any since Miami! The hostel turned out to be one of the best we've stayed in, and we made a very eclectic group of friends... English, Irish, American and Swedish! It happened to be the Swedish midsummer festival while we were there, and the big group of Swedes cooked a huge meal and invited everyone to join them. Rachael and I participated in the festivities, which involved dancing round a tree, singing songs and wearing garlands made of leaves. Never did we imagine that we would take part in a Swedish festival in Texas! It
was great fun though, and we spent a second night with them all listening to live music in the city centre and drinking and dancing the night away. The live music scene in Austin is supposed to one of the best in the whole of the States, and I can definitely see why. On that night we went to four different bars, and each one had an entirely different style of music playing. We saw a blues group, a rock group, a piano duo and a country music band!
During the days Rach and I spent our time exploring the various parts of the city. We wandered around the campus at the University of Texas, feeling nostalgic for our student days and did some shopping in the vintage shops. We took a lot of public buses where we inevitably encountered some odd characters, such as Louis, an old man from the Czech Republic who insisted on 'educating' us about the world with phrases like 'Do you know Canada? It's a big country above the United States' and 'LA is short for Los Angeles, it's part of California which is a state in the west of the country'. We humoured him for far too long.
So our experience in Texas was mixed. It was certainly not the bible-bashing desertland that we had envisaged, although it was definitely as hot. San Antonio was nice, and we're happy to be able to say that we've seen the Alamo. Austin was one of our favourite places on the trip - it has everything that a city should have, and the nightlife is amazing! We were actually sad to leave, but excited since we were moving on to San Francisco!
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