Houston Day 300 - road trip!

Got back yesterday from an awesome road trip.  Here's the run-down:

Tuesday

• Mel & I leave Houston for San Antonio.  Roads get prettier and hillier the further we get from Houston.
• Visit Mission Concepcion & San Jose Mission.  Enjoy beautiful architecture and grounds, fascinating history; love that these missions are still functioning Catholic churches - day-to-day life happening in historical spaces always makes me happy.  Feel white man's guilt about crappy colonialist, supremacist attitudes that founded such places, alleviated slightly by the fact that this time it's not my ancestors (the Spanish can be bastards too, apparently).
• Eat excellent Mexican lunch at Mi Tierra restaurant, recommended by a random stranger at the San Jose Mission.
• Attempt to find hotel with vacancy in San Antonio.  Give up after about four or five tries (spring break=busy).   Book studio apartment in Fredericksburg, and drive there.
• Enjoy taking German accent for a spin while driving through hill country.*
• Taste some wines at a Fredericksburg cellar-door-type business.  Buy bottle and spend evening having excellent conversation on the porch of our apartment in the warm evening surrounded by spring break party atmosphere.

Wednesday

• Breakfast at a lovely restaurant called Bejas.  Sopes with sausage, poached eggs and hollandaise sauce, and a mimosa, coz am on holidays.
• Browse through a fun jewellery store and buy a funky ring.
• Attempt to visit Enchanted Rock state park, but turn away in disgust due to crowds arguing with each other.  Appreciate rock from a distance instead, and drive off.  Enjoy country drive anyway.
• Visit Pedernales Fall state park.  Breathe in the horizon and the views and the feeling I get from being near water, which I think I inherited from my beach-obsessed mother.  Walk and climb over rocks and talk and soak up the sunshine and watch interesting birds.
• Drive to Austin.  By happy coincidence, arrive in the middle of South By South West film/music/arts festival.  Whole town is having a party.  Meet Morgan & McKenzie (friends from City Dance Summer School who live in Austin) at the Spider House.  Drink, dance, listen to music, meet people, and generally have a good time.

Thursday

• Spend whole day and night enjoying SXSW stuff.  Highlights include the sunshine, the excellent Mexican food, the live bands, a film called "Gayby", street party atmosphere, meeting strangers, playing frisbee, and Austin's loveliness.  Oh, and did I mention all the music gigs were free? I've never been a music festival fan, mostly because in Australia you have to be dedicated enough to pay $200 for a Big Day Out ticket, and camp for a week at Fall's.  But in Austin? You can wander in and out as you choose.  It's awesome.  Lowlights include inability to deal with tiredness after fifteen hours out, sunburn, and losing Morgan in an enormous crowd.

Friday

• Tour Natural Bridge Caverns on our way home.

And then, when we got back to Houston, Mel hopped on a plane but Lucas and Nick and Bekah and I went to the Rodeo! I went to a Rodeo! It was so different to anything I've ever done before, but it was great.  So...I drove from a music festival in Austin to the Houston Rodeo, and there were bluebonnets aplenty by the side of the road on the way.  I love Texas.  Photos to come  xo

*I learn everything I know from theatre.  Research for Freedom Train and attending Main Street Theater's Coast of Utopia season have taught me about a wave of German immigration into Texas in the 1840s owing to huge political turmoil all throughout Europe at that time.  The hill country is full of German proper names.