Simple America

Yes. I am no longer a blog virgin. After three years (yes I missed my anniversary post) I have finally got to scratch and snif my first blogger. And as a bonus I got to meet a ssecond blogger (adding another blog to my list of comfortable places to visit).

So who did I meet? None other than Zara’s Mama and Mom2Ashley. Okay maybe there was not that much scratching or sniffing. Don’t want Zara’s Daddy to kick my butt or my missus either. But there was much laughing, eating, and cajoling. And a fair amount of traveling.

These ladies travelled from the opposite side of the world and ZM wanted to see state parks. Course I have a different understanding of what a state park is so it became a bit more adventurous than they intended. They also brought along some other colleagues from work. Three gentleman visiting from Hong Kong, Shang Hai, and Australia joined us on our merry trip. We travelled three hours west of Houston to San Antonio. This city is a good hub for checking out the Hill Country of Texas.

We stayed at the Marriott Northwest and that is where I made first contact with ZM. She arrived a few moments after we checked into our room. ZM asked if she could come down and meet us. And what a lovely ambush. *wink* I opened the door and she captured the magic moment with the digital eye as displayed on her blog. And there she was. Such a cute lady and in time for first huggies too. For a bonus she gave me some white coffee, teh tarik, and some excellent curry. I am going to be experiencing some Fatt Hao days now thanks to ZM. 

In the morning I met the rest of her mates at breakfast. From there we departed for Enchanted Rock. This was my first visit, but I had always wanted to travel there. There is a lot of history in this area and I like history in case you don’t know or might have forgotten, since I have been blogging so infrequently. I will let some photos tell the rest of the story.

This is the safe side of Chinese women. If they cannot see you they cannot hurt you. This is walking along the trail below Enchanted Rock. ZM is on left, the missus in the middle and Mom2Ashley on the right.

Enchanted Rock. There is a lot of mysticism associated with this place, thus the name.

If you follow these signs you will reach the top. Really. Honest. Just follow ‘em.

Once you reach the top, you are permitted to dance around and act a fool. Then you may pass out from lack of oxygen from the walk up.

And from the top you can see Texas and more Texas.

All of that climbing around makes a soul hungry. We went to Fredericksburg for lunch. This town is originally a German settlement, so we tried a German restaurant and you can see my brat wurst with potato salad and red cabbage. I love the wurst but was not too wild about the rest of the meal.

After lunch and a bit of window shopping we headed to Perdanales Falls. This is a beautiful spot, I had visited once before. Wish you all could travel to this spot. WITH ME!!! 

We headed back to San Antonio and walked past the Alamo on the way to the Riverwalk.

We ate at Hooters and I think all of us were too tired to think of photographs. But the wings were scrumptious and the girls were delicious in their own way too. If you do not know what a Hooters girl is give it a google.

We regrouped at breakfast the following morning. The first objective was the Mercado or old Mexican market. This was a great place to find tourist souvenirs for folks back home.

We had lunch in the Mercado at La Margarita’s. The fajitas there were excellent and they had a lot of extra meat too which I enjoyed chomping upon. Sausage, chicken, and a stuffed pepper were quite tasty. Yum.

No one tried a Margarita, but the Pina Colada was a hit.

After lunch we bid San Antonio adios. Next stop was the outlet malls in San Marcos. They had made a trip here the previous weekend, but you can never get enough shopping in at these outlets. I followed ZM around like a puppy dog. I knew our time together was coming to an end soon and I wanted to enjoy her company as much as possible.

Once the shopping bug was cured (actually the stores closed), we left for Austin, the capital of Texas. And that is where we went. The capital building.

From there we had our final huggies for the trip. They returned to the north of Houston, while I headed to the southwest. Truly a wonderful trip in which I made four new friends and solidified ZM as a good friend. The memory banks in my mind are over-flowing in a good way. Thanks for letting me be your tour guide and hope we all meet again.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 10:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.