San Antonio / Austin

Moraya and I went to Fredricksburg on Saturday, it's a town about an hour outside of SA. And as the name suggests it was founded by a German immigrant. The town is full of quaint shops and German restaurants. It was also the birth place of Admiral Chester Nimitz, the commander of the U.S. Pacific fleet in World War II. The town was busy with visitors and tourist alike, it's a favourite place for "antiquing". We even went into a couple of antique shops, but my heart wasn't in it. We had lunch in Texas saloon and beer in the Fredricksburg brewery, the beer is good. Better than the Texas Lone Star beer. We also picked up a pie, half coconut and half Lemon Meringue to take back to the house. Back in SA we picked up Jerome and Don and went to the Little Red Barn for steaks as I hadn't had a proper steak in Texas yet. We were joined by another Moraya's aunties, Linda and her son Gerald. Linda didn't stay to eat with us but did very kindly pick up the tab for all of us. I had a rib eye steak, medium rare and it was so good. I can't give up meat, it would be just too cruel. We spent the rest of the evening at Olive's house and I lost at Mahjong again.
Sunday arrived and we spent a quiet morning in the house swapping stuff from our hard drives. I also had to decide where I was going to go after Dallas, I had a couple of spare days before I needed to be back in NYC. I didn't want to go back there too soon as I was already going to be spending more time there at the end of my trip than I had anticipated. I had waited too long to book my Statue of Liberty cruise and so had to go back earlier than I wanted to. I would say planned but if I had planned anything I wouldn't have this problem! I sat and locked at a map of the U.S. and tried to think of a place I wanted to go. In the end I decided on Miami, I've booked the flights so there's no changing my mind now.
Once again I had got comfortable somewhere and I was reluctant to leave. Moraya drove me to Austin, my next stop, it's only about seventy miles from SA. The hostel wasn't too difficult to find and is in a good location next to Lady Bird Johnson lake. I showed her around the hostel as she has never stayed in one. I don't blame her, if I was travelling with someone else I don't think that I would stay in hostels. I say this after coming off a long time spent staying in a house, I guess I have to get used to hostels again. I had emailed people on Couchsurfing for Austin but had had only one response so I had to resort to the hostel. Hopefully my luck will change for the rest of my trip although for NYC I have at least three possible places to stay, Ian's, Meghan's brother Jim and of course Meghan and Christophe, they've just moved to Brooklyn.
After Moraya left I chilled for the afternoon in the hostel reading and talking to the other guests. There isn't much that I want to do here so I can afford to relax a little. I do have to send my passport to the British Embassy, it expires before I am due to return home so I have to get it renewed. I got talking to Lesley, she is in town for a conference on sustainability and recycling and was up for going out. We headed across town to the "Church of the Friendly Ghost" they were having a concert of experimental music. We dropped into the venue and I decided that it wasn't for me. Lesley and I had dinner together and she kindly let me off the hook. I caught the bus back to the hostel and almost got run over on the walk back from the bus stop. That put me in a foul mood. My stay in Austin wasn't getting off to a good start.