35th Anniversary

35 years of marriage to my bride, Tammy, and we took a brief trip to central Texas to take in the Wine Festival in Fredericksburg and visit our son, Jordan, at his new apartment in Austin. This was our fourth visit to Fredericksburg and second wine festival. It is always fun with the festival generating more activity and the shops in full swing, many with Christmas decorations ready to sell. There are not too many towns you can walk the sidewalks and boardwalks into active shops, restaurants, and stores full of sweets and treats. The town has history with some structures still standing that were built in the mid 1800's so there is plenty to look at if your feet can endure the walk.

We arrived on Friday after driving through scenic hill country from San Marcos to Fredericksburg, checking into a late booking from a month ago, the Sunset Inn and Suites. We stayed in a deluxe apartment with two large rooms, living area and bedroom, plus kitchen and breakfast bar. Each room had a TV for the Astros World Series games 4 and 5 viewing, which they won. It was nice and the only complaint really was the bad Wi-Fi signal. It was close to town, only blocks from main street and we always park on San Antonio and walk over to main. Of course, wine tastings are everywhere as is the variety of food.  We were told of a good mexican restaurant that was primarily frequented by the locals and decided to drive out to it, Hilda's Tortillas. It was okay, the salsas were runny and the chips very thick, but the food was pretty good. Our other choice that we never went to was Hondo's On Main and it might have been better. We are rather spoiled with the Tex-Mex we have in Pearland.

On Saturday we ate breakfast at the highly recommended Sunset Grille, which was right next to our room in the apartment complex. We could hear some of the kitchen music at times through the wall. My choice of breakfast was not as appetizing as I expected, but Tammy had french toast that was good. It was a cold morning and the inside part of the restaurant was packed and people were waiting when we got there pretty early. They suggested the outside area, enclosed with temporary wind breaking tarps and heated with outside heaters, and after checking it out we decided to eat there rather than wait for inside. It was fine and we were even joined by a couple of dogs. The place quickly filled up outside and when we left there were many folks waiting outside.

We drove into town and after parking on San Antonio, then walked the many blocks through town adventuring into the stores and shops along the way. We didn't get all the way west before turning back on the opposite side toward the Markplaz von Fredericksburg and wine festival. They had a list of names, including mine, for folks who ordered online but tickets were not mailed due to my late timing placing the order. Sample after sample of flavored this and that ensued. We sampled some wine, two small pours, and eventually had to walk back to the car to put up our coats and Tammy changed shoes to ones more her liking.  Then back to more samples and entertainment. We gave out after about 3 hours and went back to the apartment to rest before dinner.

We had not made reservations for dinner and tried our luck, like we had once before successfully, driving to the Cabernet Grille. Long wait just for outside! So we drove into town on main to the Vaudeville and it also had a long wait. But it was only a short distance down the street to our third choice, where we ate last time 3 years ago, the Rathskeller restaurant. No problem sitting and being served, and the specials were very very good, as was the wine.

Sunday morning we drove into Austin to meet Jordan who had been at our house in Pearland attending a local wedding. The traffic was worse than we expected and once we got there we only had to walk to a restaurant down the street, Fonda San Miguel, an upscale Mexican restaurant that served buffet style on Sunday. It was very good but too much food to travel on the road home if I had eaten like I would have preferred. We enjoyed visiting Jordan and Nik's shared apartment and visiting with both in their bachelor pad.

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