Wednesday December 1- Traveling again!

Well Molly and I are on the road again, for another first...a trip to Texas.  We were invited to participate in another Special Olympics event, apparently Molly charmed lots of people in LA, and they wanted her back, this time in Austin!  We left the house early, with flurries flying and landed in Austin to 56 and rising.  Our hotel is right downtown, the Omni, a tall tower in the center of the action, rising 20 stories, with a roof top pool and glass elevator.  After checking in, we were taken by the bellhop to the club floor(only accessible by key) and to our beautiful room with floor to ceiling glass windows. We can see the University of Texas football stadium!  We decided to hit the gym for a workout, ESPN was on the big scree TV and Molly took the elliptical right in front of it...I chose a treadmill with a little built in TV, and tuned it to...you guessed it, HGTV!  Life is good!  Afterwards we changed and went to the rooftop pool and swam and went in the hotub, it was so cool up there.

We showered, changed and set out to explore Austin. We walked down to the capitol building and took a short tour, saw the statue of Davy Crockett and learned a little history. By now we were starving..so we went to a cool little spot called Hickory Street Bar and Grill.  We ate fried pickle spears with ranch dressing, homemade breaded onion rings, and Molly had a chicken fajita salad(too spicy after a while) and I had a wrap with hummus,lettuce,tomato,etc. It was very good.   We took a city bus up Congress to the University of Texas bookstore and bought Molly a  Longhorns T-shirt. Then we enjoyed a walk across the beautiful campus, checking out all the students and buildings. We got tickets for the mens BBall game against Lamar ( not a sell-out...no surprise!). One thing I noticed was how nice the fans are there. They had a big sign up on the screen about the behaviour expectations, and the first thing on the list was respect. I think U of M could learn from them.  Our upper seats were a great spot from which to watch the team warm-ups, then we moed down to about the 10th row, right next to the band, so we could do the cheers. Horns Up! The dance team was excellent, but what I liked is that they wore hot pants and chaps, you know your in Texas! The game was great, the Longhorns won, and then we walked about 1/2 mile back to the Omni. So all told a great day, lots of exercise for sure, and some fun for Molly and I. Early rise tomorrow, so good night!