After a nice mexican breakfast (the leftovers from yesterday) we left our tobacco-smelling non-smoking room and headed off towards a Natural Forest area. We were feeling we really good use some hiking in the forest after all the decadence. We drove through beautiful Texan countryside, top down, +30 degrees Celsius and no worry in the world. Our trusted navigator guided us to a "Scenic road" which turned out to be a bumpy unpaved road with lots of dirt. While the driver was focusing keeping us on the road, the passenger focused on spotting deer-like animals in the forest.
After some driving around we found the starting place for the hiking routes. Unfortunately, it had been closed few weeks ago with an official order. The reason was that it was too dry and at the same time too rainy.. Puzzled by this advice we thought maybe today is not our hiking day. We headed off to a Monument Hill instead. The place combined two sights, a graveyard of Texas people from the 1800's who were shot in the war with Mexico and a big stone house and a private brewery built by a German settler in the end of the 19th century. We got to do some walking in the forest after all!
We ended up spending the night near Austin, Texas. We chose a Holiday Inn near the airport which meant airport prices. We asked for a price and the guy took a piece of paper where he wrote down the price. We were thinking whether this is some kind of an "offer you can't refuse" type of thing. R took his best sad face and said that unfortunately that is somewhat over our target (100$/night). The guy then asked us to wait for a minute to see what he can do. After serving another customer he said he could get us in with a discount rate by giving us a room meant for "American Airlines distressed". The only condition was that if anyone asks, we needed to say we are stranded by an airline :-) so again we got nice 20$ off from the room price.
The hotel incuded a happy hour with snacks and free drinks and of course we needed to use the amenities all our money's worth ;) the room was the biggest and nicest room so far, and we even did some evening swimming. A chose the big pool, which was probaly 15 degrees colder than the other one. Well, it got our blood circulating again!
On Thursday we headed to the State Capital, Austin. That was a really cool city! We could've easily stayed there for longer, but all the hotels downtown were either full or crazy expensive. We checked out the Capitol Hill, which was B-I-G. We walked up and down the streets of Austin for hours, and thought that this is a bit like the San Francisco of Texas. People were fit, restaurants served organic food, all kinds of hippies were here and there and there was a nice street with all kinds of bars, music clubs etc. if it would be closer to Europe, it would be a nice place for a weekend getaway.
In Austin is also a famous bat bridge. For some reason bats are liking one particular bridge there, and the live under it. Every evening it is a huge tourist entertainment to see the bats fly out for their nightly food hunt. We did not stick around for that long, but we walked under the bridge anyhow and heard some bat noises. Of course after this we had the Batman theme singing in our heads for a while..
After Austin we decided to drive to Fredericksburg. A city about 100km off from Austin was founded by German settlers and is also the birth place of a famous character of WW2 history, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. The main street of Fredericksburg is full of small shops, biergartens and other restaurants. We got the cheapest motel room so far (45$) just around the corner of the where the action is. We ended up sitting in a beerhouse with 100+ beers on the selection and a Texas blues/country singer performing, sitting outside and enjoying the perfect weather under a big . Again, a really nice city picked totally randomly from the map!
P.S. we got the car oil changed in Nederland, so that has been taken care of as well :)
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