Vacations in progress and recaps…

Well, I guess I missed the last 3 days of writing for 30 minutes…or maybe it’s just that I’ll do it 3 times a week instead of 6.

It’s a lovely Saturday morning, and Ronald & I are out at Canyon Lake.  My brother, Bryan, and his girlfriend Eryn are here.  Mom & Dad are on the way (with breakfast tacos from Casa Alde YES!)  Other brother, Beau, and his girlfriend Amber will be here later.  Not sure I know of a time when we all made a point to get together and just hang out (unless it revolved around a deer lease/hunting trip).  We should definitely make a point to do it more often.  Ronald and I made our way out early to do our week 1 day 3 Couch to 5k workout.  The view along Canyon Lake while we ran was quite nice.  Seems like scenery helps make running a litter easier.  I tried out mapmyrun.com to plan our route/distance.  It seems pretty handy…only problem being we ran into and area that apparently required DOD ID for entrance…  I’ll have to look into some better resources for planning/mapping routes if perhaps you’re not too familiar with the area.

We’ve made some coffee and are just enjoying the views on a lazy morning.  Not sure what else we have planned for the day, but I’m sure it will be fun.  Our dogs are staying with a good friend in our absence, and I miss them.  We’ll have to find a pet friendly lake house to bring them to one day soon.  I think they’d like a little trip like this.  I know they’re having a blast where they are!  I just hope my friend doesn’t want to pull her hair out by the end of their visit.

Yesterday, after our drive into Austin- Ronald & I made sort of a quick tour of the major points in our relationship.  We had a quick beer at The Draught House (where we were on an outing that turned into our first “date”).  Then, we drove out toward Driftwood where we visited Chapel Dulcinea (site of our own nuptials almost four years ago) and then had an early dinner at Salt Lick BBQ (site of our wedding reception).  We brought along a growler filled with Live Oak HefeWeizen.  I’m quite fond of the “Come and Fill It” logo on the growler (acquired at The Growler Room.)

So, I’ve been thinking I needed to write a post (or a few actually) talking about our time spent on vacation in San Francisco.  I found a cool feature on google where you can create your own maps with various points of interest.  So, I started making one with all the locations we’ve visited (spanning 3 trips to SF since 2009).  (Here’s a link to my San Francisco spots map still in progress.)  I really REALLY enjoy San Francisco.  I knew it was time for us to visit again because I had started having dreams about going and having Blue Bottle Coffee.  We stayed 4 nights.  It doesn’t sound like a long time, but we did a lot.  We literally got off the plane and took a cab to Blue Bottle in Mint Plaza.  It was walking distance from our hotel – so, we headed to the hotel to get settled in post caffeine fix.  Once rid of our bags, we walked all the way down Howard toward the Bay Bridge/Pier 14.  It was a GORGEOUS day!  We wandered into the Ferry building.  Apparently, we were just a little too late for the usual Saturday farmers’ market.  We decided we’d do an early dinner at Tadich Grill.  The Cioppino was pretty epic…and the seafood sauté wasn’t too shabby either.  In order to maximize our post dinner calorie burn, we walked ALL the way over to Alamo Square Park and snapped some pictures of “The Painted Ladies”.  There was a random couch in the middle of the park…which I think made for an even better photo opportunity than the old Victorian homes…  We decided to take a bus back, and we pretty much turned in for the day.