The Alamo

My mom and me by the fountain on the Alamo grounds.
San Antonio struck me as much older than I remembered it 15 years ago, probably because I was so young, and there were tons of beautiful old trees around the city. The Roomie and I unintentionally matched this day...fail.

The security guard in the non-ironic cowboy hat in the bottom left of this picture is my favorite.

The Riverwalk

I didn't know this before our boat tour, but a few scenes from Miss Congeniality were filmed on the stage to the right. Our guide's two daughters were scheduled to participate in dance recitals later this week on this stage, which is pretty much the cutest thing ever. An outdoor dance recital in November is not something we ever could have had in Minnesota! We always got stuck in high school gyms and the recitals lasted the better part of a century.

We ate at this cute Mexican restaurant with the colorful umbrellas, which are pretty much synonymous with the Riverwalk. There was a mariachi band that serenaded a table near us, but unfortunately never made it to ours.

Mission San Jose

Photos were prohibited inside the sanctuary, but here is a picture I found online of the front:

The doors to the mission were so pretty. I was scrolling the tag on Instagram and saw some AMAZING wedding photos in front of these doors. I love that such an old and historic building has been preserved so beautifully over the years!

Hello, friends!

We are settling into life in Austin, which includes doing some exploring on the weekends. On Friday, we decided to start fulfilling our personal mission to eat and rank all the BBQ restaurants in the Austin area and headed over to Terry Black's Barbecue just south of downtown. It. Was. Amazing. Granted, it was only the second stop on our BBQ bucket list (first was The Salt Lick) but I think Terry Black's is going to hold onto that #1 spot for awhile ;).
Here's our food:
I should add that earlier in the day, the exterminator paid us another visit (he's truly the best friend we've made thus far) to investigate the wildlife that has graced our apartment. To no one's surprise, he told us we are the first people in our entire complex that has had a scorpion inside. Figures. He also got excited when I produced the scorpion (that had been out on our balcony in a plastic bag) and let us know that it was a rare breed that he had never seen in person and was almost never found inside houses. So that's cool. And terrifying.  He even asked if he could bring it with him to show his coworkers. We gladly obliged. We've luckily been bug-free since then.

On Saturday, Ali worked and Peter and I got a few errands done before heading to the driving range. Peter used to golf a lot but the lack of a car made it a bit of a challenge to keep up with the hobby in Australia. Since we've lugged those clubs from Minnesota to Missouri to Melbourne and now to Austin, I'm adamant that he actually puts them to use ;).

While Peter golfed, I downloaded and started reading Mindy Kaling's book Why Not Me? and it's absolutely hilarious so far. I loved her in The Office, but haven't really followed her much since then, so I'm looking forward to catching up with what she's been doing.
After Peter finished up golfing, we decided to check out the view from Mount Bonnell, just a bit outside the city on the Colorado River, which is also called Lake Austin. Which is potentially also the same thing as Lady Bird Lake? I'm confused about all the different "lakes" in Austin because they're actually all just sections of the Colorado River as far as I can tell. Anyway, it was too foggy to see much, but you can make out the skyline in the distance.
We then met Ali at Nordstrom and headed to the Cheesecake Factory next door for some dessert. It was super crowded and took forever to get a table, despite spotting about 238032 empty tables waiting to be cleaned off that sat untouched for 15-20 minutes. I think this might actually be my biggest pet peeve. I was minutes away from volunteering to bus the tables myself if it meant we could order our cheesecake faster. Maybe I'm just super impatient, but I cannot stand when restaurants make you wait and then let open tables sit.

After dessert, we headed over to a new rooftop bar called Backbeat for a drink. There was a really unique selection and I honestly don't even remember what was in the one I finally settled on, but here it is in all its artistic glory:
On Sunday Peter streamed the Vikings game from his computer, I lounged around a bit, and then we ran a couple more errands. Fascinating stuff, really.

We have a low-key week planned, with our first visitors arriving on Saturday! Since we won't be going home to Minneapolis for Thanksgiving, my mom and stepdad are going to come down this weekend to check out our new place and celebrate Thanksgiving a little bit early.

Okay, so everyone knows there are huge scary bugs in Texas, right? But for some reason we assumed we could avoid them by a) moving into a brand new building b) not living on the first floor and c) being deathly afraid of them and willing them not to enter our apartment. FALSE. So false.

The first encounter happened about a week after I drove down with Ali, when Peter was gone on a work trip, of course. I couldn't sleep, so I got up around 2 am and turned on a light in our bathroom. Two seconds later, something scurried along the baseboard and into the linen closet. Great. I knew enough about cockroaches from our Australian apartment nightmare to know one when I saw it, so I did what any self-respecting person would do: I ran into Ali's room, flipped on the light, and started screaming. Poor Ali assumed a relative had died or something, so she shot out of bed before she even realized I was screaming about a bug. We decided we couldn't sleep knowing it was in our apartment, so we went back to the linen closet and searched. We couldn't find it (of course), so we just Raid-ed the crap out of the closet and then shut the door and I went to Ali's room to sleep, with the kitchen and living room lights on. In the morning, we made our way back to the battle zone and wouldn't you know it...the stupid little thing was dead as a doornail on our bedroom floor. HA! Victory.

Because I am slightly insane, I had already joined an online bug identification service (only $1.99/picture upload people!), but I didn't even need to use it this time to know it was a cockroach. Luckily, it wasn't the little kind (German roach) we had in our apartment in Australia that multiply by the second and are next to impossible to get rid of, thankfully. This was the larger but less likely to infest kind (American roach), that probably wandered in from outside and isn't *hopefully* plotting a takeover of our entire apartment. We called the exterminator, who came and sprayed down our apartment, and he was extremely helpful and patient with us. I'm sure he thought we were completely insane. Anyway, he let us know that the one we found was "tiny" compared to its full-grown size, so to not be alarmed if we see one much bigger than that. Great! Luckily, we haven't seen one since. I know more about the various cockroach species than I ever wanted to, that's for sure.

That bring us to our second, somehow more traumatic encounter. What is more traumatic than a cockroach, you ask? Read on!

Ali got home from work the other day to discover a dead (thank you, exterminator!) scorpion on her bathroom floor. Now, our friend the exterminator assured us it was highly unlikely we would get any scorpions INSIDE our apartment, so we weren't exactly prepared for this one. It was much, much smaller than I imagined, but still pretty terrifying. So, we've requested the exterminator again this Friday and we'll see if he can work his magic. We did notify the leasing office and they seemed to indicate that scorpions weren't a huge issue in our area, and it was a bit unusual we had one in our unit. I think they thought we were just hyper Northerners who had found a large ant or something and freaked out, so they wanted me to send them a photo to confirm that it was indeed a scorpion. I'm convinced these creatures seek us out because they know we are absolutely terrified.


Avert your eyes if you don't want to see a picture of our little friend...



I'm predicting a tarantula sighting next week. SEND HELP!!!

The weather was perfect the whole time we were there, which apparently is pretty typical of San Diego.

I wasn't sure how close you could get to the seals without being attacked, or whatever seals do, so we kept our distance. They looked nice and friendly but then a few started fighting pretty aggressively, so I decided to keep my distance. Plus, some of them were massive. Like, monster seals. Another reason not the wade into the bacteria-infested waters, if you ask me.
We got a drink at this cute rooftop bar and watched an amazing sunset before dinner. The weather, the sunset, and the scenery were all pretty idyllic.
I took a picture of the ceremony, which was attended by about 15 immediate family members. It was such a nice service, and Peter's grandpa Ed and his new wife Jean looked great!
There were a couple rescue donkeys on the ranch and they came right over to us when called. So cute! This place got me dreaming of the farm I'd love to own someday, which Peter isn't exactly on board with....yet! He's convinced I would play with the animals and he would get stuck doing all the non-fun barn chores. This is probably true.
We drove up one of the hills and got a great view of the ranch. It was pretty much the perfect venue for a fall wedding, complete with a large renovated barn (for weddings and other events) that I didn't take a photo of apparently.
On Saturday evening we stayed in San Diego and got a chance to explore the downtown area. We had an awesome Italian dinner in the Little Italy neighborhood followed by gelato, of course.

In the short time we've been in Austin we've gotten a chance to check out the local food scene a bit. This is pretty much the most important part of any city, right? So far, we've pretty much focused on tacos and desserts. Obviously.

Tacos

Okay, Torchy's Tacos is the greatest restaurant ever in the history of the world. I'm not kidding. There are a million different tacos to pick from and they're all soooo good. Plus, they're huge and you can kind of customize how spicy you want to make them. Side note: coming from the North, I think we have a different concept of "spicy" because I typically order mild but even that here is pretty hot. Ali accidentally ordered a taco with "diablo sauce" and pretty much had a heart attack.

There are a bunch of Torchy's locations, each with a different style/atmosphere, and I have a personal goal to visit every one of them.

 

Dessert

There's a cute little food truck area in the South Congress neighborhood not far from where we live, so we decided to try out Hey Cupcake! and all agreed they were some of the best we had ever had. P.S. they aren't kidding about the traffic being TERRIBLE in Austin. We live about two miles from this area, and it took exactly six minutes when we went after dinner the other day when there was little traffic. But, during the day it takes a good 15 minutes to get there. We've driven around at 2 pm and encountered rush hour level traffic that you'd expect in a much bigger city. Pretty much, we just avoid 35 altogether if possible.
Lastly, we went for a drink the other night at a coffeehouse nearby and I spotted this Minneapolis-based coffee for sale! Kind of random, but fun to see something from home.

And here is the common living area, where you can hang out, watch TV, or work.
Our apartment complex has two buildings: the first was completed earlier this year and is full, and then the second is still under construction. We are some of the first tenants in the second building, pictured below, and when we arrived there were only two other cars in the parking garage. Since the building is still under construction, our amenities won't be finished until early December, so we have to trek to the other building down the street for the pool and gym until then. A bit annoying, but we got a great deal on our rent, including the first two months free, so we can't complain too much!
And now for a few pictures of our actual unit...here's the kitchen.
And a wider view of the kitchen from the living room area. Excuse the dirty floor...like I said, there's still a bunch of construction going on so the hallways are a bit dusty!
The living room:
I snapped (If you want to see additional fascinating content follow me! My username is laurahinderaker) this picture, and the sentiment remains true. It's still in the 90s here in Austin and there's no sign of it cooling down anytime soon. Any Texans reading...does it ever cool off?!
I spent the better part of one day last week assembling this IKEA TV stand. I have a serious love/hate relationship with IKEA. Mostly hate. We've moved around a lot, which has translated into a lot of IKEA furniture building and I'm sort of over it. If I never have to put together another LACK or MALM item, I'll be extremely happy. Once I finished this stand, I went to attach the back panel and realized I was missing a few pieces. At least, I thought I was. IKEA directions are the most confusing/least helpful thing ever. So, Ali and I went back to IKEA yesterday and tried to get the missing pieces. I felt like a complete idiot when the guy informed me that the piece I thought I needed more of was actually just supposed to be one piece that was basically a tool that I thought was a legitimate part. Awkward. So, today I'm going to tackle the rest of it.