Relaxed and Re-"Wined"

Last Friday was my birthday and also our sixth anniversary. To celebrate, we headed out of town, sans kiddos (thanks mom). Okay, I guess I should be clear about this. Technically, Dave was on a cross country (again). He actually asked for permission on this one and it worked out that we got a weekend away. We were originally going to take the kids with us, but when my mom volunteered to watch them, I jumped at the chance. So Dave flew up Friday morning, and I drove up that afternoon. I picked him up at the airport, then we headed to the Marriott - which is right on the riverwalk. That night we ate at the Cheesecake Factory (my choice - since we don't have one down in Corpus). After that we went and saw Angels and Demons. Yes, an actual movie at the movie theater, which is exactly what I wanted to do. I'm pretty sure the last movie I saw in the theater was Mamma Mia last August with my mom and cousin. But anyways...

Saturday we got up and headed to Fredericksburg, which is a German town in the Texas Hill Country. It is a really neat town with stores all up and down Main Street that you can walk to. Unfortunately, a lovely little cold front went through on our drive up there and with it came rain. It was really too wet to walk around and I didn't get to take any pictures. We ate at a restaurant in town (an hour wait - so wouldn't have been fun with kids) and then moved on to our real destination - the hill country wineries. I'm not exactly sure how many wineries there are in the surrounding area, but we went to five, and skipped over several, just in one small area. It's kind of like Texas' own Napa Valley. In fact, Texas is number two in the U.S. in wine production now. We had a blast doing the tastings at all of the wineries and of course, restocking our wine supply. Our last wine trip/binge on the Olympic peninsula supplied us with enough wine for about two years. I don't think we were quite as crazy this time, but I shouldn't be hitting the grocery store for wine any time soon...

This was one of my favorites - Grape Creek winery. The setting was so beautiful - green fields all around. They called themselves the "Tuscany of Texas".

That night we went for a stroll along the riverwalk. It was so pretty down there and the weather was perfect because of the cool front.

Here's a picture of the Riverwalk, so you can kind of get an idea of what it's like. It's down below street level and there are restaurants on both sides, plus stores, bars, and hotels.

We probably ended up walking a mile or more before stopping to have fajitas at a Mexican restaurant (not as good as La Playa, though). But the view was great - this place had a patio a so we were above the foot traffic, but still could see everything. My picture didn't turn out that great, but here it is:

You can't see the river, but it's there behind the railing and bushes.

After dinner we went to Howl at the Moon (a bar which features sing-along pianos) and had a blast! There just happened to be a bachelorette/girls gone wild party right in front of us that kept us entertained most of the night. After drinking beers there for a couple of hours we decided to call it a night. Sunday was time to head back home, although I could have used another day to just sit around and read and relax. All in all, it was a great weekend away and I'm already looking forward to the next one.