People that think that Texas is really big are right. Its pretty much miles and miles of baron waste land that is until you get to Austin.
Texas… Trust me it all looks the same.
Downtown El Paso looked like a city that died 20 years ago, scratch that, make that 30 years ago. I arrived around 7 at night and it was a ghost town. I literally drove around for 20 minutes looking for a “good” Mexican place to eat and couldn’t find a single shop or restaurant open for business. There was the local night club where apparently everyone who lived in town was standing in line. After giving up I found a decent Mexican restaurant about 15 minutes away from downtown. All I remember was it was really cheap.
After dinner I drove another couple of hours to Van Horn Texas. It is a truck stop on your way to either Dallas or San Antonio. Again google text saved the day. It allowed me to sit in one parking lot and find out that the Motel 6, Super 8 and Holiday Inn were all booked and it also let me find out that the Ramada Inn “Select” had a non smoking room available. I realized one thing about motels from this trip, you aren’t necessarily paying for the bed, your paying for the hot shower. It scares me to think that half of the hotels I’ve been reading about in Peru and Ecuador make it a point to let you know that they have “hot baths”. YIKES!
Austin Texas is a cool town. Lots of bars, shops and restaurants with what appeared to be a fairly eclectic mix of people meandering around the place. I met up with Char who is performing with the Lion King at the UT campus and dropped off my car. We had a nice breakfast dinner at the Magnolia cafe right down the street from her luxury suite at the Homestead Inn. Gregston bit the bullet and drove in from Houston to come hang out. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that it was Mardi Gras weekend and that 6th street and the warehouse district were inundated with locals and college students ready to party. It was great to continue our college debates on which computers are cooler, faster or better. Gregston and I have a $100 bet that in 5 years his baby girl will look at a PDA type phone and call it an I-phone. Char met up with us at some Irish pub and drove us home.
After a night of drinks we all crashed at Char’s place. With literally 3 hours of sleep I (okay we) had to wake up and pack me up to get to the airport. Thanks to Gregston for taking me to the Airport and thanks to Char for taking my car off my hands for a couple of months.
Oddly Enough I only have one picture from Austin…
Everything you said about elpaso was rediculous. Just because you pass on through a city doesnt give you the right to immediatly assume that the city died 30 years ago…Culture is alive the shops are open and quite a few mexican restruants here are known nationaly… Your dumb.
you’RE obviously from El Paso!