Parkers Prints: weekend adventure

Hi there! Brace yourself for a post filled with way more pictures than any post should ever contain :) This weekend we went to Austin for a mini-vacay.

On the way we stopped at Blue Bell in Brenham. If you're not from the South, you truly are missing out on some of the best ice cream ever.

Unfortunately they only do tours M-F 10-2 & we passed through on a Saturday. Their "country store" was open though & we got a few scoops of ice cream & took a few pictures.

For lunch we ate in Round Rock (outside of Austin) at a place called The Salt Lick. BBQ of course. I didn't think to take a picture until after I started eating, but this was my plate. Sausage & brisket with potato salad, coleslaw, & beans. This is supposed to be a kid size plate, big portions!

Then we headed to the hotel to check in.

Our room. We used priceline.com to book our room & I highly recommend these types of sites. We always use them & get such good deals. This is a 3 star hotel & surprisingly one of the "worst" we've ever stayed in. Nothing was wrong with it but that's just to say how good of rates we find.

We stayed in an area of Austin called the Arboretum. We ventured out to an outdoor mall & found this trail.

At the end we found this pond! The water level is low because of the drought.

Later that afternoon we took a boat tour. (our boat looked similar to the one in the water)

Around this lake is a 10 mile trail & park. If you look closely you can see dogs playing in the water. Austin is super dog friendly (and bike friendly too)

A train came over the bridge.

Graffiti that's actually kind of cute.

A view of downtown.

Look on the green boat & you'll see a black pug suited in a life vest- so cute!

And this is the Congress Street bridge where a colony of 1.5 million bats live!

They come out every night (during summer) & happened to come out right as we passed under!

This is a popular event as you can see by all the people lined up on the bridge.

A few facts we learned about bats... Less than 1% have rabies. You can tell the difference between a bat & bird because a bird can soar, but a bat constantly flaps it's wings.

From a distance they look like swarm of bees or smoke.

A pic from the boat ride that I edited using my Instagram app.

Afterwards, we went downtown to the infamous 6th Street. We found a super nice sushi restaurant & ate dinner there.

When going back to the hotel, I took a spill. No alcohol involved, just uncoordinated me. I didn't see a step & tripped & fell down to my hands & knees. SO embarrassing. Luckily there weren't many people out, but still hurt the pride :(

my battle wounds:

Skinned knee.

ruined pedicure.

Bruised palm.

The next day we also discovered the keyless entry remote got a pretty bad scrape too.

On Sunday morning we headed to Magnolia Cafe. We ate there last time & it's just amazing. You have to wait nearly an hour to get seated because it's always jam packed, but well worth the wait.

I got a "vegetarian" omelet which had avocado, mushrooms, onions, & tomatoes- SO good. It also came with fruit & "home fries" also so delicious. The husband & I split a pancake. We ordered a plain buttermilk pancake, but this must have been a super special order that we got by mistake. It looked normal on the outside, but it was really 3 different flavors. One third was filled with peaches & cream cheese, another third was gingerbread, and the last third was buttermilk. What a nice surprise :)