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Sure, the main purpose of the trip was to celebrate a milestone, but you can't go to Austin and not take time to just hang out. Not to mention doing your part to Keep Austin Weird.
On Friday, we had a late lunch at Kerbey Lane in South Lamar. Then stopped by Hill Country Weavers (of course). laitaine2004's family got together for dinner that night, but I was so exhausted I didn't get to see them until the next day at the party.
On Saturday we had lunch at Souper Salad at W Anderson Lane, before "Mama's" birthday party. (Well, she's not my grandmother, but the rest of the family appears to have adopted me...) There were plenty of friends and family members, music, cake (two cakes, in fact)... I have two-and-a-half hours of footage, and no clue what I'll do with it. But it was fun... :)
[I'll let L. go into details on that...]
Much later, we went to Origami Sushi (also on W. Anderson Lane) for dinner...
Sunday morning, we stopped by Sonic for a really quick breakfast, before joining the "core" family for Sunday service and a fellowship lunch after. Then we rushed to Disch-Falk Field to watch the Longhorns host the Kansas State Wildcats. The 'horns lost, 11 - 9. It was an ugly loss, too...
[On a related note, I got tickets for Opening Day--the Nationals host the Marlins...]
We stopped by Momoko (on 24th St) for some bubble tea. It's a tiny gift shop that sells tea pots, incense, anime posters... pocky... :)
Oh, and did I mention the really good bubble tea...?
We'd been looking into the possibility of watching 300 at the Alamo ever since we landed in Austin, so when the opportunity presented itself, we jumped at it (since we couldn't jump... well, nevermind). Wendy and Samantha (my roommates at ORC 2007) met with us at the Alamo South Lamar for dinner and 300 Spartans (dessert ;).
[FYI, "300" (IMAX) had the highest-grossing opening weekend ever in the month of March.]
On Monday we went to Hill Country Weavers again. I couldn't find anything to buy. This is something I should have celebrated, right?
Actually, I was pretty down about it, go figure... so when we stopped by Book People, I got a few knick-knacks...
Lunch was at Sherlock's Baker St. pub (Research Blvd.) and dinner at Brick Oven at Braker Ln & Jollyville (Laitaine's friend Monica joined us for dinner). Sherlock's is one of the places I'd like to share with muse_neko and 9thcircleofhell if we ever next time we make it out there...
Tuesday - So here it was, the end of our trip, and we hadn't had a proper afternoon tea yet? Alas, it was not to happen this weekend. The Tea Embassy (900 Rio Grande) doesn't serve a regularly scheduled tea. They have afternoon teas for particular occasions (Valentine's, Mother's day, etc.). However, their gift shop was definitely worth spending some time to browse. I got one of these tea timers--couldn't resist it. I'm bringing it to tea from now on... :)
We also found out that Chantal has a LIVESTRONG Collection, with 10% of its sales benefitting the Lance Armstrong Foundation. We got a teapot and a couple of tea mugs. I hear that someday we'll have one tea pot for each of our friends and have our own tea party at home. Hopefully sometime before we turn 100... ;)
I'm definitely still thinking of retiring to SoCo... :)