A little taste of Germany

Today was another travel day but totally on our own terms. We had a hire car and all we knew was we were in Austin and heading to San Antonio. Rather than head straight there, we decided to take a bit of a detour via Fredericksburg.

So after a late start we loaded the car and headed off. Considering we were in Hill Country, it wasn’t particularly hilly. In fact Kate remarked that our drive looked kinda like northern NSW, which was pretty accurate. I was concentrating on the road pretty strongly, as the whole driving on the right side of the road thing was still sitting in the forefront of my mind. But the longer I drove, the more comfortable I was getting.

Home to the Pacific War Museum

After an hour and a half, we arrived in Fredericksburg. The name is a bit of a give away, but the main reason for visiting is that the town was settled by Germans back in the 1800’s and retains a lot of the original buildings.

Town Centre

A “Sunday House”

There are the old town halls, and also what they call “Sunday Houses” which were the houses the farmers used on weekends when they came into town.

I should have popped in and said G’Day

It was a cool little town to wander for a few hours. It seemed there was even the odd Australian influence! The cold was still biting, but it was cool to just wander around a small Texas town and soak it up, even if it was not your typical Texan town.

Mmmm… German Barbecue

At lunchtime we couldn’t resist popping into a German influenced restaurant, where I decided to have my barbecue sausage with a healthy serve of sauerkraut and german mustard. I knew there would be more traditional Texan barbecue in my future, so it was tasty to put something a bit different in my belly. Mmmm.

Back in the car it was, this time the destination being San Antonio. On the way into downtown, we popped into one of the large shopping malls to see if there was anything we wanted to pick up on one of our last days in the US. We were decidedly uninspired so did not pick up much. In fact a new pair of Cons (Simpsons no less!) was the only purchase.

In no time at all we were at our hotel in downtown San Antonio. It was dinnertime, so we decided to wander down to the famous Riverwalk, but in the end decided for a catching a movie for something different.

It was either American Hustle, Anchorman 2 or Frozen, and Frozen won. We both dug it as it was a nice riff on the usual Disney animated movie. What was amazing though was the cinema. Leather reclining chairs all through it, and only 6 bucks for a ticket. Crazy, and added more salt to the wounds of paying 20 bucks for movies back home.

Night done and it was bed time.

The make them big in Texas

Today was another chilling out and exploring day in Austin. But boy it was tough to get going. Why? Because it was a crazy -4 degrees outside at 10am that’s why!

It seemed a lot of the US was going through a crazy cold snap, but it was hitting Texas hard. It gets cold here in Winter, but as everyone was telling us, not THIS cold. Luckily we had thermals and beanies packed, so in the end we decided to brave it and get out there.

Random Austin buildings

Oh boy it was cold. We hadn’t felt below zero for a while. And it seemed the whole city was feeling it as the streets were super quiet for a Monday midday. But in the end it didn’t matter too much and we legged it to our first destination, the State Capital Building.

The Capital Building

Austin is actually the Texas state capital which makes it an interesting place. It is the capital, but doesn’t feel particularly “Texan”… although I am basing that on not much given this was my first taste of Texas. I am expecting to see more hats and hear more broad accents as we move to San Antonio.

Looking up at the Dome (the star in the middle is 8 feet wide)

The capital building is something to behold though. It is a huge building, even bigger than the capital building in Washington DC. We wandered in and jumped on a guided tour through the building.

Even the hinges are extravagant and massive

It was cool to wander around the building, checking out the House of Reps and the Senate, but also seeing the extravagance. Every door had these crazy big hinges, just in case you didn’t know where you were.

I know they are probably a pest, but I love chasing squirrels!

Outside the building were a number of monuments and statues. Me though, I liked chasing the squirrels.

After that it was well past lunchtime. We had another destination to go, so we went back tot he hotel, grabbed the car, and did a quick lunch stop at Whole Foods before heading to the Lyndon B Johnson Museum and Library.

LBJ Museum and Library

LBJ Museum I hear you ask? It would not be my usual go to, but it did sound kinda interesting, and Kate was keen, so we went for a visit.

Hanging out with the man himself

And I must say it was a great museum. Focusing on LBJ and the events of the 60’s, it was fascinating. He is acknowledged as the first real bona fide Texan president. My US history is a bit light on, so to hear everything LBJ did after coming to the top job after the Kennedy assassination was great and the whole museum presented it in a great way. Both of us really dug it and were super happy we went.

It was closing time so we moved back to the hotel to chill a little before grabbing a bite. There was more BBQ to eat! Next on the list was Stubb’s BBQ. This was in part because of the barbecue, but also as it is probably the most well known live venue in Austin. So off we went.

The famous Stubbs BBQ

Alas there were no gigs there while we were in town, but we could enjoy the barbecue nonetheless. Given yesterdays eating fest, we both went a little lighter. Kate opted for the pulled pork again, while I went for some ribs and jalapeno sausage (with some sweet potato fries and onion rings for sides).

More BBQ. Mmmm.

How was it? It was pretty tasty. Not in the league of Franklin Barbecue, but it hit the spot. The sausage in particular was good and hit the spot. Mmm… I could get used to this barbecue thing.

With that it was time to chill for the rest of the evening. Seems it is a quiet time for Austin. There was music happening, but nothing major, and it seemed to be pretty generic bar music. I guess it is the middle of winter when bands aren’t playing shows and folk aren’t really out. So it seemed like we wouldn’t really get a taste of the famed music scene, but the vibe of Austin and the amazingly friendly folk everywhere made it well worth the visit.

The mecca of BBQ

Looks like I am I am back on track with my blog posts for the last few days of our travels!

Today was our first day proper in Austin. Being a Sunday things seemed a bit quieter than I imagine they usually are. But we didn’t help, having a slow morning. I slept for about 10-11 hours which I never do, giving an indication of how little sleep I have had over the past few weeks. That, or how much I have done. A bit of both.

But we couldn’t sleep in too late, as we had to be up and about to go to one of my top of the list for Austin. “What is that?” I hear you ask. well, maybe just the BEST BARBECUE ON THE PLANET.

I say maybe, as Franklin Barbecue is now the stuff of legend. Growing from a small trailer, it is now a modest rustic eatery close to downtown Austin that has been lauded by everyone, famously by Anthony Bourdain in particular, and that is adored by locals and a curiosity for tourists. Only open for lunch 6 days a week, it;s opening hours are “11am to sold out”, meaning if you want what could be the best Beef Brisket in the world, you go early and line up.

Joining the queue

So Kate and I thought we wouldn’t have to line up that early, so got there about 10:45am. Already was a queue a few hundred people long. One of the super nice staff told us we would be eating about 1pm, so a 2 hour wait. Some people debated the wait, others were working out if they would make their 2pm flight. Kate and I… we waited.

And holy freeze balls it was cold. It was about 5 degrees and it felt every bit of that. Everyone in line was collectively enduring the cold and super chilly wind for a taste of the mythical barbecue. It seemed people had already been there a while, all rugged up and with their own chairs to make it easier. But as I said to Kate, if we lined up for things at Disneyland, we are sure as heck lining up for this.

During our wait one of the nice staff bought us a sneaky sausage and man it was delish. That little taste kept us going.

Making it inside!

Close to 1:30pm it was our time. The dude behind the counter gave us a taste of the brisket to help us make up our mind what we wanted. But it was already made up… brisket and pulled pork. So with a bit over a pound of meat we sat down to enjoy.

The options are pretty simple

And holy cow. The brisket was one of the best things I had ever eaten. It is hard to know if it was the wait, the cold, or what, but I couldn’t believe how good it was. Kate was especially loving the pulled pork as well, but I was a brisket man.

This tasted INCREDIBLE

Just after we sat down to eat the famous Sold Out sign went up. Some folk who didn’t wait nearly as long seemed to just make the cut, but I was happy we didn’t take the risk.

Oh yeah, I made it before it sold out!

With bellies so full (mine more so than last night even) we wandered back to the hotel to rest for a bit. We were both in a bit of a food coma, so chilled for a bit. We knew we have tomorrow to see more of the city, so were in no hurry.

Wandering down 6th

But it came time when it was best for us to walk it off a bit, so we wandered to a record store I was keen to check out, Waterloo Records. Alas they were closing early to stocktake, but I got a chance to browse a bit and pick up a nice limited Flaming Lips 7″, even signed by Wayne. Score!

Cruising Historic Austin

Still so full from lunch, we wheeled in to the nearby Whole Foods Market. Like a supermarket but full of local and organic food and also build your own meal goodies, our brains exploded. The food choice all looked amazing and so much! All we could say was if this was our local supermarket we would eat like kings and queens every day. Kate built a salad that looked amazing (and tasted as such). We even picked ourselves up some treats and vowed to come back before we got underway with our roadtrip to San Antonio in a couple of days.

The famous Alamo Drafthouse Ritz

Stocked up we wandered back. Things were still pretty quiet on 6th. Seems as if Sunday night is the one night to rest for everyone. OK by us, as we enjoyed the stroll  back to settle in for the night. I was a bit bummed the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, which I was keen to visit didn’t have much on. There was a Nic Cage mystery movie marathon that would have been ace, but sadly we had missed the start (we were indulging in BBQ meat at the time) and didn’t have 10 hours spare to enjoy it. There was also only Hobbit 2 which both Kate & I swore we wouldn’t pay money to see, so we gave it a miss. And it was a bigger bummer that we were missing (by one day!) what we would have loved to see… Monty Python and the Holy Grail Quote-a-Long… apparently complete with coconut halves for all.

Oh well. You can’t have your brisket and eat it too (or, actually you can). Mmmm… brisket.

Edit: Check out Anthony Bourdain’s visit (I assume this video will play outside the US). Mmmmm…  http://www.travelchannel.com/video/austins-franklin-barbecue

Frank!

With our farewells said, we got to have a last catch up with Deiber before we legged it to the bus station to catch the bus to the airport. It seemed some one had made the rain gods very happy as they had not let up. So umbrellas up, we did the quick 5 minute sprint to the bus station.

After an hour or so we were at busy Cancun airport. I am sure it is busy most the time, but it seemed packed with US folk heading home. I can see why Cancun and Playa del Carmen would be popular spots for US tourists… quick to get to, everyone speaks English, you can even use US dollars. For Kate and I it wasn’t our favourite place we had been, but with the ruins and turtles was still a nice way to end up.

With no significant plane issues, it was on the plane and back to the US. Most flights from Cancun to the US seemed to head through Texas, so I took the opportunity to visit a place I had wanted to for quite a while… Austin! Home of bands, beer, and BBQ.

So we arrived to the small international airport, grabbed a hire car, and drove into the city to our hotel in downtown. We were both exhausted. Not so much from the travel, but it seemed everything was really catching up with us. It had been 4 weeks of travel to this point so we were running low on energy. But we summoned up the energy to keep at it… for a bit anyway.

Our biggest dilemma was “what do we eat first?!”. I had a few places on my radar, and given we were both tired and not that hungry, we elected to go to Frank, an artisan hot dog place rather than BBQ, which we would save for tomorrow.

I knew a bit what was on the menu already, so I decided to go all out. I ordered the “Goober” hot dog, which was dressed with peanut butter, raspberry aioli and caramelised banana, along with a bacon infused vodka bloody mary.

Mmm… bacon bloody mary

When the bloody mary arrived it was sensational… a massive cripsy rasher of bacon stood proudly out. And I gotta say, it was super tasty!

Behold the Goober

The hot dog too was delicious. Unlike anything I had really eaten, there was salty peanut butter and the sweet raspberry and banana. All on a hot dog. Genius!

Black Magic Waffle Fries

Kate however was most smitten with the cheese and bacon waffle fries that came to our table. “What kind of black magic did they use to make these?!” she exclaimed. It was just what she was after and the look of elation on her face meant that we had chosen wisely for dinner.

Choc Bacon Cookie

Even though we were super full, we ordered some small desserts. How could we not order the chocolate covered bacon or the chocolate and bacon cookie?

Looks dodgy, tastes delicious

Both were delicious. The chocolate covered bacon was even way better than I imagined it would be. It totally looked dodgy (as evidenced by the pic above), but was yum. By the end of dinner we were both lamenting how much we had eaten, but were both super happy. With that we waddled slowly back to our hotel, hearing the live music streaming from the joints on 6th, and fell asleep.

One of the friendly locals

Sadly, today was our last real day with the tour and of our Central American journey. It meant saying farewell to people we had shared the last few weeks with as well as saying adios to the amazing places we had been and food we had eaten. I don’t think I will get another taco like I have had in Mexico.

Anyway, on to our day. It was another action packed day, as you get a bit on this blog. While it was tempting to chill for the day in Playa, how could we when we knew there was so much else to see and do outside of town? Deiber was again a champion today, organising a private van for a bunch of us to squeeze in as many activities as we could. So on the agenda was more ruins, more cenotes, and more sea turtles. Win!

Seaside ruins!

First destination was to the Mayan ruins of Tulum. Now we had seen our share of ruins to this point, but Tulum had something the others didn’t… a seaside locale.

Dramatic ruins on the cliffs

So off we went and we arrived about an hour later. First thing was the the number of tourists here was heaps more than the other sites we had visited. It was a little odd given that it had none of the prestige of the other places we had visited (especially nearby Chichen Itza), however it made sense as it was a short trip to these from nearby Playa and Cancun, meaning those folk enjoying a sun and beach filled holiday can get a taste of ancient culture.

Wandering the ruins

Those Mayans sure knew where to build things

Joining the throng, we spent an hour and a half wandering the site. Much smaller than the other we had visited, it was still great due to the dramatic coastal location. These were clearly the Mayans who knew about “location, location, location”.

Saying hi to all the tourists

This was also fun as we were rubbing shoulders with big numbers of iguanas, casually wandering around, and clearly used to the tourists. They were happy just to hang out and were not disturbed by us tourists putting cameras in their faces.

Enjoying the seaside

This was also the nicest site to just sit back and relax, with lots of shady grassy places to just sit and soak up where we were. It was glorious.

More Cenotes!

But we couldn’t do that all day. Instead it was time for our next stop… cenotes! If you remember we had a ball at some ceontes early in our trip. In just 10 minutes we arrived at our swimming hole and it was incredible. In fact I thought it was quite a bit more picturesque than our first ones we went to. Much more crowded, but many places to explore, as we could swim amongst stalactites and stalagmites (I hope that is geologically accurate), into small caves, and see more fish swimming with us.

Swimming the beautiful blue waters

There were a number of cenotes there, all interconnected by a cave system. We weren’t that adventurous, however many scuba divers were and it was weird to see the odd light and frogman underneath us as we swam.

After an hour we had enough, so it was back in the van to our final stop… chasing sea turtles! I was super excited for this, as it was a chance to see more of the little fellas from when we were in Belize. This was a different experience, as rather than boat out, we could swim out from shore.

Again, this was a very bust beach, but it seemed to be the norm in this part of Mexico. That didn’t stop Kate and I getting out there in the water, and finding a couple of turtles to ourselves, which we followed for a while. It was so relaxing to gently swim after them, watching them graze on sea grass and come up for air every now and then.

Elephants to greet us in our hotel room this time

It was already 3pm, and it was time to head back to Playa del Carmen to wind down. And we had impeccable timing. As we drove back the heavens opened and the rain came down. And came down. And did not stop.

In fact from this point on, blue skies were gone and replaced with torrents of rain. The rain gods were saying farewell.

After a quick run to the bus station to organise airport transport for tomorrow, as well as a cheeky street taco, it was the sad occasion of the farewell dinner. Again, it was a bittersweet occasion. Nice to be with new friends, but sad to say goodbye. It was especially sad to say goodbye to our new German friends Joern and Iris who had been with us since day one in Cancun, and our trip leader Deiber. He was unbelievable. I know it is the job of the leader to make sure everything goes to plan, but he constantly stepped above the call, and to cap it off was one of the nicest guys you would ever meet. Kate and I were super lucky.

Saying farewell

So after a last Mexican dinner and lots of hugs it was time for a final drink with some of the crew and off to pack for our journey back to the US tomorrow.