We were looking forward to having Eddy and Betty in our house since they had hosted us several times. Clyde cleaned like crazy the days before we came as he wanted everything to be "perfect". We only had a few days and we wanted it to be a time of relaxing. We planned each day as it came up and concentrated on the important things. Barbecue, Shopping and afternoon Aperitifs!
Betty had her list of items to buy while in the US. Grandchildren are always on both of our minds so we headed out to JCPenny and Sport Authority for our first serious shopping. We did take them to the token Wal-Mart store and since it is not my favorite place, quickly shuttled her over to JCPenney's. We found some great buy on the kids' clothes and Eddy and Jim even managed to find a few things. We found the tennis outfits at Sport Authority and congratulated ourselves on a great first day!
Austin has its share of interesting things to see but since our time was limited, we decided to get some Barbecue and take on the Outlet Malls. There is no way to explain how they do barbecue in Texas, you just have to experience it! Eddy took his pictures of the wood piles, food served on butcher paper and let's just say we chowed down enthusiastically!
The Outlet Malls are huge and we were only able to tackle one side of the complex. But we were quite pleased with our bargains and Betty managed to check off the items on her list. I told her she could have two of my suitcases as I had saved them for just that occasion. They managed to make everything fit and we relaxed with the movie Secretariat. We had listened to the history of this amazing horse at Churchill Downs and the movie just brought the story to life again.
Our last day we decided to go to San Antonio for the River Walk and Alamo. At first we thought our day was doomed as we left sunny Austin only to run into a down pour as we approached San Antonio. Jim and I had a suitcase in the repair shop so decided while there we would pick it up and give the rain time to ease up. It was still gloomy when we made our way towards downtown.
Then we had a great surprise and the sun came out just as we parked! We took a little river cruise and listened to some history of the area. After lunch we made our way to the Alamo where Eddy managed to get his pictures with the State Police.
As we made our way back to the car the rain started again so we ducked into a Texas Hat store where Eddy finally found his Stepson. We let our chauffeur Jim take us back to Austin and prepared to start out the next day for Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon.
Just like in the movies......
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