Okay, not adventures. Excursions. Not adventurous excursions, mind you. Plain jane, simple, low key excursions, cuz that's how we roll. But at least we finally got out of the house and did something for a change. It seems like there are always so many festivals and fairs and concerts, etc going on around here but we always find a reason (aka lame excuse) not to go. When we moved here to Austin I was so excited to go out exploring and do all the different stuff there is to do here but every time the weekend finally rolled around we were too lazy to do anything. I'm not really sure why we do that to ourselves or why I'm admitting our laziness to you but there you have it. Thanks goodness for Aspen (Preston's sister) coming into town last weekend to visit us and motivate us to get off our butts for a change.
We decided to go to this little town called Wimberley up in the hill country. In my head I was picturing kind of a quaint little historic town but it was actually a little on the eccentric side. It was still cute though and had some good looking restaurants I'd like to go back and try one day. Especially the pie place. Mmmm, pie. Anyways, I guess every month they have this big Market Days thing that we decided to go to. It was a much bigger deal than I was expecting. There were TONS of people there. I thought it would be like a basic little farmers market type setup but it was so huge. It had 450 vendors and it was laid out with little streets (with animal names) and shops (actual wooden stalls and buildings-not tents) and took a good couple of hours to walk through. It had everything from candied nuts and homemade jams to cowboy apparel to jewelry to handcarved stuff to furniture to toys and everything in between. I would say that 80% of the stuff was your typical kitschy souveniers/homemade crafts but there was a lot of fun stuff to look at. We didn't buy anything because we are tightwads and hate over paying for stuff we don't really need but it seemed like such a shame to walk away empty handed. Maybe next time.
Then our friends the Dunnings told us about a festival called Wurstfest down in New Braunfels. This area was settled pretty heavily by Germans and Czechs back in the day and you can still see a lot of that influence everywhere. New Braunfels is a good 1.5 hrs away but we decided to go check it out. We love all things German. We want to live there someday and we are even attempting to learn the German language. We had a lot of good food in Germany when we visited there so we were excited to go the Wurstfest and maybe eat some authentic German food again. I sadly have to report that we were slightly disappointed. Not that it wasn't cool, but for how cool everyone says it is and for how much money we had to spend (things there, including admission, were a little pricey) it actually wasn't very big and didn't have all that much to do. Well, that's a lie. There is a lot to do at a German festival if you drink beer. Since we don't drink our activities were a little limited. :) It had rides but they cost more than we were willing to spend on them, especially since we had Cohen and he was too small for most of them anyway. There was a huge building with a zillion little Bavarian looking stalls selling food and trinkets. There were a few authentic things but not as much as we were hoping. I mean, there was only one stand that sold schnitzel, and they only sold it as a sandwich. Sad day. There were a lot of sausages and some sauerkraut and apple strudel but one could also delight in some tamales, German tacos (whatever those are), nachos, and even deep fried oreos. I was tempted to try that one but I refrained. We got to eat with Jon and Merideth and Cole in a giant dining hall with live music and guys dressed in lederhosen so it wasn't a total bust. Plus, it was a gorgeous day, it was in a nice setting with trees and actual water (we don't see much of that here these days with the draught) and it renewed our motivation to save money and go back to the real Germany and eat real German food someday.
Just a shot of downtown Austin on the way down.
Cohen looks thrilled, doesn't he? He was so ready for a nap and then he proceeded to stay awake the whole hour and a half ride home until about 10 minutes before we got there. Figures.
For those of you who are still waiting for pictures of our new house I'm sorry. I haven't gotten to actually do anything to the house since we moved in so I haven't been able to justify pictures yet. Soon, I promise!
We decided to go to this little town called Wimberley up in the hill country. In my head I was picturing kind of a quaint little historic town but it was actually a little on the eccentric side. It was still cute though and had some good looking restaurants I'd like to go back and try one day. Especially the pie place. Mmmm, pie. Anyways, I guess every month they have this big Market Days thing that we decided to go to. It was a much bigger deal than I was expecting. There were TONS of people there. I thought it would be like a basic little farmers market type setup but it was so huge. It had 450 vendors and it was laid out with little streets (with animal names) and shops (actual wooden stalls and buildings-not tents) and took a good couple of hours to walk through. It had everything from candied nuts and homemade jams to cowboy apparel to jewelry to handcarved stuff to furniture to toys and everything in between. I would say that 80% of the stuff was your typical kitschy souveniers/homemade crafts but there was a lot of fun stuff to look at. We didn't buy anything because we are tightwads and hate over paying for stuff we don't really need but it seemed like such a shame to walk away empty handed. Maybe next time.
Then our friends the Dunnings told us about a festival called Wurstfest down in New Braunfels. This area was settled pretty heavily by Germans and Czechs back in the day and you can still see a lot of that influence everywhere. New Braunfels is a good 1.5 hrs away but we decided to go check it out. We love all things German. We want to live there someday and we are even attempting to learn the German language. We had a lot of good food in Germany when we visited there so we were excited to go the Wurstfest and maybe eat some authentic German food again. I sadly have to report that we were slightly disappointed. Not that it wasn't cool, but for how cool everyone says it is and for how much money we had to spend (things there, including admission, were a little pricey) it actually wasn't very big and didn't have all that much to do. Well, that's a lie. There is a lot to do at a German festival if you drink beer. Since we don't drink our activities were a little limited. :) It had rides but they cost more than we were willing to spend on them, especially since we had Cohen and he was too small for most of them anyway. There was a huge building with a zillion little Bavarian looking stalls selling food and trinkets. There were a few authentic things but not as much as we were hoping. I mean, there was only one stand that sold schnitzel, and they only sold it as a sandwich. Sad day. There were a lot of sausages and some sauerkraut and apple strudel but one could also delight in some tamales, German tacos (whatever those are), nachos, and even deep fried oreos. I was tempted to try that one but I refrained. We got to eat with Jon and Merideth and Cole in a giant dining hall with live music and guys dressed in lederhosen so it wasn't a total bust. Plus, it was a gorgeous day, it was in a nice setting with trees and actual water (we don't see much of that here these days with the draught) and it renewed our motivation to save money and go back to the real Germany and eat real German food someday.
For those of you who are still waiting for pictures of our new house I'm sorry. I haven't gotten to actually do anything to the house since we moved in so I haven't been able to justify pictures yet. Soon, I promise!
