[audio http://www.adaptationtech.com/music_files/03%20Blood.mp3]

The Middle East – Blood

Sorry if the title of this one loses some of you, but if you grew up in the “Road Trip” movie generation, you’ll understand this one pretty well.  With the baby’s grand entrance only 2 months away we decided to take a little “babymoon”, which is another new concept that I was not aware of until my boss threw that word at me 6 months ago.  To be honest the first thing that came to mind was a baby mooning me  out a station wagon window, but that farthest from the truth.  This was a trip for my wife and myself to get away, see a show or two, eat some good food and enjoy our last trip as just the two of us for quite a while.  You’re probably asking, “Why Austin?”, and it’a pretty simple answer.  Being the ever so picky musical fan that I am, I have somehow always been able to dodge seeing the show Wicked.  When we were looking for places to go with our Half Off Southwest Airlines deal, she immediately looked for locations where the show was playing.  Since we had missed our last opportunity to travel to the metropolitan mecca of Peoria, IL, we found that the show was only in two places, Austin and back on Broadway.  Now this is usually the time of year when a trip to NYC to see some of our favorite Irish folks, as well as stuff ourselves silly with 30 course tasting menus, this time the threat of bad weather and extended walking trips in the cold made us look at Austin with it’s proximity to the southern hemisphere.  So after my generous father in law covered the cost of the hotel with his bajillion Hilton Honors points, we were off to the land of big steaks and eclectic music for a long weekend.

Now I’m about to try and knock on my desk while typing this next line, but for the first time in our vacation history, our travels went flawlessly.  No delays, quick flights, and best yet, enough time for a shoe shine.  As my father said, one of the great things a man can enjoy in life is a good shoe shine every once and a while, and boy did I enjoy.  We got in the first night and after pulling a lazy card and just eating in the hotel with some big haired ladies and a ridiculously friendly bar tender, we began our trip with a nice sleep in leading up to a leisurely walk to SoCo shopping.  For those of you not familiar with Austin, SoCo is the land of “interesting” shops and tex mex.  As seen in the picture below, even their signs are eclectic.  

To be honest, we could have put a pretty big dent in the wallet at all the stores if we really wanted to, but we restrained ourselves in hope that we can return one day with a fortune in tow and buy those hippies out of everything they have.  We spent the day enjoying Yelp reviewed restaurants and still had time to fit in an afternoon nap before heading to Wicked.  All I can say is that our little bun in the oven was eating well to say the least.

We saw the show, shared a cab with some new grandparents who we befriended waiting around for any sign of public transportation, and again were in bed before 11 pm.  If we had any goals in this trip, it was to sleep more, and believe me, it wasn’t hard to accomplish.   Just two days into the trip and we were already exhausted from all the napping and eating, and with no scheduled events, we were well into our routine and ready to see what else Austin had to offer, queue Whole Foods Day.

I’ll stop at this point in order to have enough room for my raving review on the Alamo Drafthouse, Uchi and some of the other great shopping that we did.  I’ll even end with an artsy picture that we took for the Baby room.  We may couple it with the one from above in a montage de silly, but that will just have to come in future posts.