Austin

For President's Day weekend we drove down to Austin. Because we are not really city tourists we spent most of our time touring the city parks. We walked five miles of the popular water front trail along Lady Bird Johnson Lake.

We shared the trail with cyclists, vacationers with cameras (like us), old couples bird watching, moms and dads jogging with their double strollers (and triple strollers-- didn't know they made them), and swarms of runners. My personal favorite however was the shirtless middle aged men swinging their hips while speed walking. Ryan's reaction to my giggling: "its a legitimate sport and a great workout." Its also pretty funny looking.




We received a great history lesson when we toured the State Capital and the Texas State History Museum.




You know the saying, "you get what you pay for"? I have come to believe that it is true, at least with hotel rooms. Last year, my brother, Jerrad and I paid $35 for a hotel room in Reno. What did we get? -- a room with multiple stains on the carpet (I don't know what they were from---but it didn't look good), intense cigarette smell, and plenty of drunken screams throughout the night.

In Austin, Ryan and I paid a little more for our hotel room. We got free breakfast.The room was adequate-- though I still didn't trust the cleanliness of the floor or sheets enough to lay Gwen on them. We also got thin walls and loud neighbors. One night, we awoke at 2:30am not to our cute Gwen but a loud argument, filled with obscenities, going on outside our window. The cops were called and we didn't go to bed.

Moral of the story: We obviously are not paying enough for our hotel rooms.