Enjoying Texas

It’s day three down here in College Station, Texas, where were are visiting my sister (who is going to grad school down here) and her husband.  We flew into Austin late Wednesday night and saw that even the airport has stages for live music!  We’re heading up to Austin as I write this, so hopefully will have some pictures to post of the live music scene.

As soon as we stepped out of the airport, we were welcomed by that Texas humidity.  It’s definitely not the pleasant Colorado fall weather out here. Thursday had temperatures spanning to the high 80’s, with the humidity approaching the same.  I think we ended up bringing the cool weather with us though, as on Friday it cooled down to the 60’s with very low humidity.  Today is the low 70’s with the humidity staying low, feeling like a pleasant late-summer day.

The last two days were filled with me working, but I did manage to break away in the evenings to enjoy some great restaurants Christina & Tony found.  We had lunch at Madden’s, in the neighboring town of Bryan.  They had the most amazing tomato bisque that was simply to die for!  We also enjoyed lunch at “Freebirds” which is basically a variation of Chipotle.  For those in Fort Collins: I’m not sure if it would rate the quality of Big City Burrito, but it was definitely a step up for Chipotle and maybe Qdoba.  For dinner we went to FishDaddy’s Grill House, which had some excellent smoked ribs that were a great value.  We’ve definitely ate well down here in Texas!

On Friday afternoon we went to the Messina Hof Winery and experienced a brief tour followed by an excellent tasting.  if you’re a fan of sweet wines, this would be a great winery for you.  They had a really good Port that went well with chocolate, as well as the Solera Sherry – which tasted like a cinnamon roll.  At the vineyard there was this pond that was full of turtles.  When we approached them, they all swam right over to us, thinking we were going to feed them.  It made for a crazy picture:

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The Vineyard also made for some pretty pictures as well:

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Before we left College Station my sister gave us a tour of the Texas A&M campus.  It’s a beautiful, spread out campus.  One of the highlights was this tree that created it’s own arch over the sidewalk.  They say that if you walk under the branches with the person you love, that you’ll be together forever.  Bethany and I snapped a picture under this tree:

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We then stopped off at the book store and snapped a picture in front of her new university:

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Next up: Austin!