“We’re from Texas! We like things big!”

a little jim gaffigan for you.

but we did have BIG day today! so big that we need two posts in one day just to cover it! like i wrote earlier, we had some wonderful muffins for breakfast… and then later for lunch! erin sent us off with a deLISH plastic baggie filled with pita sandwiches and muffins and nutritious cereal bars and a banana. mmmm.

proof, erin. thanks again!

it took us a tad bit longer to get to austin than it would have to houston, but it was totally worth it. the drive was pretty much okay. naturally, fifteen minutes after i thought to myself, “weird that we’ve only really hit traffic in la…”, we hit traffic. but not normal boston or new york deadlock traffic. little pockets of traffic, instead, right by on and off ramps. very strange. but regardless of that, we made our way down texas pretty easily. and no tickets this time! and we got ice cream! in the spirit of funny mariel-eating-things pictures, here’s this:

and because of the wonderful snacks we had today, we didn’t take our usual hour-long lunch break, so we actually made it a little faster than we normally would. which gave us plenty of time to explore downtown “weird” austin.

we got to this little strip area on 6th street that suzie recommended, and walked up and down trying to find some authentic tex-mex. on the way, we found homeless people, souvenir shops, big trucks, and probably about 37,489,234,783 bats. give or take. GROSS! when we were in one of the souvenir stores we saw a ton of magnets and tshirts and other kitschy things that had bats allll over them. not real bats, obviously, but illustrations, photographs, etc. and we were wondering what the HELL was going on with all of this, and we definitely found out the hard way as we were making our way down the street.

first of all, the sidewalks are COVERED with bat poop right under the generally lovely trees. secondly, they look like birds at first so you don’t think there’s anything creepy or gross going on until they’re swooping waaaay too low for comfort. and lastly (and most importantly) they are so ridiculously loud! if i knew how to put videos on this, i would post the one that lucy took just so we could treasure the shrieking madness of these creatures for ever and ever.

but we finally found a great place called manuel’s on congress street that was super good. lucy got “the best margarita in austin” AND “the best mole in austin”, so she was clearly riding high the whole time. mariel got chicken, and i got a stuffed pepper thing i was really embarrassed to try and pronounce for the waitress.

tomorrow: new orleans!

ps: you can click here for the flickr pictures from today, aaaand the link also has a permanent home in the little blog list to the right of the post. it’s called “road trip flickr”. just in case i forget to attach the link for you.