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Old 7 Feb 20, 09:55 PM  
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Sparksy72
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An Awesome Austin Adventure - July 2020



Hello we are Michelle (me), Adam DH and Cooper DS12. We are from Australia but we live in the UK. We also love travelling to the US.

After a fairly stress filled few travel days on our way to Orlando last August, Delta gifted us with enough travel vouchers and cash to fly return to Austin!
As this is a bonus trip (this summer we have already booked a week in Lake Como and have an August trip to Orlando and New York ) we are planning an action packed 8 days!

So we fly from Newcastle to Amsterdam, then Amsterdam to Austin. We have three nights planned in Austin, including the 4th July, so we are looking forward to visiting the Capitol Building, all of the amazing food trucks, Barton Springs and climbing Mt Bonnel and hanging out at Rainey Street.


We are hiring a car so will then make our way to Dallas for two nights, with a stop for me in Waco! So excited to visit Magnolia Kitchen and the store too! Our plans for Dallas include the AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, South Fork Ranch (home of the Dallas TV Show) and a Trip to the Fort Worth Stockyards, DH would like to fit in a visit to the Gas Monkey Garage if time permits. It will be an action packed couple of days but we don’t need to sleep!

From Dallas we head back to Austin (via Waco again, this time to do the Dr Pepper Museum) for our last three nights, we are looking forward to visiting San Antonio to see the Alamo and the Riverwalk and maybe some tubing at New Braunfels before our journey back to Austin. We will try to fit in a trip to Buc-ee’s on our way back for fuel and snacks!

We would also like to visit Gruene Hall to fit in some line dancing and maybe pick up some merch too!

We love bbq food, so have several places we would like to visit, like Terry Black’s BBQ and Valentina’s Tex Mex BBQ. I am honestly hungry already

I will update our hotels as they are confirmed and also add tips from our Concierge at our first Austin Hotel for the 4th July Celebrations. Thanks for reading

Edited at 07:46 AM.
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Old 15 Feb 20, 10:34 PM  
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Wow, sounds like an amazing trip planned. Even better when the flights were free! Texas is most definitely on the bucket list, we would love to do a road trip taking in all the sights you mention. Can't wait to read all about it
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Old 15 Feb 20, 10:57 PM  
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Originally Posted by smithlane View Post
Wow, sounds like an amazing trip planned. Even better when the flights were free! Texas is most definitely on the bucket list, we would love to do a road trip taking in all the sights you mention. Can't wait to read all about it
Thank you! Yes, whilst our delays last year were a pain, it’s so lovely to be able to visit Austin as a bonus trip. I think this trip will hopefully give us a better idea for a longer trip in the next year or two. Thank you so much for reading
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Old 7 Mar 20, 09:04 AM  
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So a very quick update

We have booked our first 3 nights at The Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin. It’s located on 6th Street so isn’t far to Rainey Street where there are loads of bars and restaurants. It’s also only a 10 minute walk to the Texas Capitol Building and it does Texas shaped waffles for breakfast



Then for our Dallas stay our Hotel is Live! By Loews - Arlington Texas. This one looks a bit fancy and has a great outdoor bar/ restaurant area. It’s within walking distance to the AT&T Dallas Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys. We are planning on doing a Stadium Tour here, so that will make it easy to walk to and after a quick google it appears there is a 24 hour Walmart nearby everyone wins!



Our last hotel is back in Austin, the Holiday Inn Austin - Town Lake. This one is cheap and hopefully cheerful. It also has a free shuttle bus back into Austin which means everyone can have a cocktail (obviously not Cooper!) This Hotel also overlooks ladybird lake and we hope to make the most of the water activities whilst we are there



So the dates for the Stadium tour aren’t released until May, so there really isn’t much else to do other than follow Valentina’s TexMex BBQ, Terry Black’s BBQ and Gourdough’s Donuts on Instagram! thanks for reading








Edited at 09:17 AM.
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Old 7 Mar 20, 07:00 PM  
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The hotels all sound great! I’ve made a note of them as we are seriously considering a Texas road trip for our holiday next year after reading so many great reviews. Because it is A Level and GCSE year for my 2 we’ll be limited to going in July probably so roughly the same dates as you. I like the thought of being in the US for Independence Day.
Those doughnuts look immense and who doesn’t love a Texan shaped waffle. I think that would have swung that hotel choice for me too 😂
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Old 7 Mar 20, 08:16 PM  
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Originally Posted by smithlane View Post
The hotels all sound great! I’ve made a note of them as we are seriously considering a Texas road trip for our holiday next year after reading so many great reviews. Because it is A Level and GCSE year for my 2 we’ll be limited to going in July probably so roughly the same dates as you. I like the thought of being in the US for Independence Day.
Those doughnuts look immense and who doesn’t love a Texan shaped waffle. I think that would have swung that hotel choice for me too 😂
I have everything crossed that the hotels are as great as they look. We love to explore and find that if the location is central we are happy to walk and sightsee as far as we are able. It looks like the Driscoll should satisfy that for our first few nights. Another Dibber recommended Rainey Street as being a great location for food and entertainment and it is only around the corner from the Driscoll.

A more in depth road trip sounds brilliant- I already know that this trip is really just a prelude for a bigger trip in the future. It appears that there is some great free entertainment like fireworks and music for the 4th July so we are all excited for that!

I honestly think we are going to have to fit the sightseeing around our eating and snacking
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Old 7 Mar 20, 08:51 PM  
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I hadn't realised you'd started a pre trip for the Austin holiday I have no advice or any useful information I can add to this. I'm just following with interest as we loved watching Friday Night Lights, Dave wanted to be Coach and I wanted to say Y'All to everyone like Mrs Coach. We've just started watching it again with the kids. Love the lone star state, even though I've never been there I can't wait to read all about your holdiay plans. Oh and it's even better that it's a freebie holiday from Delta I'm sure you will be able to eat a lot of BBQ.

By the way the other place we're both keen to go to is Hawaii so if you could fit that in so I could get some tips thst would be really rather helpful or maybe some tips for Australia as Dave said may be that should be somewhere we head to before Max leaves home we've only got a couple more years of family holidays as he's doing GCSEs this summer. So I suspect Australia won't happen while he's still at home.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling on this trip sounds fab and I can't wait to hear about it all.
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Old 7 Mar 20, 09:18 PM  
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Originally Posted by Goldia View Post
I hadn't realised you'd started a pre trip for the Austin holiday I have no advice or any useful information I can add to this. I'm just following with interest as we loved watching Friday Night Lights, Dave wanted to be Coach and I wanted to say Y'All to everyone like Mrs Coach. We've just started watching it again with the kids. Love the lone star state, even though I've never been there I can't wait to read all about your holdiay plans. Oh and it's even better that it's a freebie holiday from Delta I'm sure you will be able to eat a lot of BBQ.

By the way the other place we're both keen to go to is Hawaii so if you could fit that in so I could get some tips thst would be really rather helpful or maybe some tips for Australia as Dave said may be that should be somewhere we head to before Max leaves home we've only got a couple more years of family holidays as he's doing GCSEs this summer. So I suspect Australia won't happen while he's still at home.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling on this trip sounds fab and I can't wait to hear about it all.
Hello Abby, honestly I haven’t had much to report so far, so you haven’t missed alot! I have a terrible habit of inadvertently mimicking accents when we are on holiday (I think it must be an illness ) so there will be a lot of y’all’s going on, much to Adam’s embarrassment

So Hawaii is totally on my ‘must visit’ list, however Adam quite rudely has been without me several times prior to us meeting so I have taken one for the team and agreed to go to Austin maybe then he will feel so grateful and I can book Hawaii! If not, we could leave everyone behind and go together and drink cocktails

I feel like you would really enjoy Australia- this is a bit embarrassing but we do have a trip planned to go home this Christmas Our reasoning for this is that we have had two lots of free flights this year, so my theory was that we have saved loads which would pay for a trip home! My best girlfriends from our hometown are going to be honeymooning in Europe and told us we must stay in their house whilst we are there. Not sure it would be a trip report that would interest anyone as we will only be doing things on the Sunshine Coast but I can’t wait to hang out with our family and friends and have a hot hot hot Christmas

You are an amazing trip planner, I don’t doubt for a minute that you would manage to organise a trip to Australia for all four of you in spite of GCSE’s. How do the kids get so big so fast!
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Old 7 Mar 20, 09:32 PM  
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Looking forward to reading about your trip, we are off to Austin in October then over to Miami and home
We went to San Antonio last year and loved it

The Alamo and the missions were so interesting

We also drove up to Frederisckburg in the Hill Country which is a sweet little town and the base of the most amazing Museum of the pacific war one of the best museums I have ever been to outside of the smithsonian
We are doing a day trip from Fort worth to Dallas on the train ...following on from CrispyA's trip report!

Edited at 09:33 PM.
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Old 7 Mar 20, 09:43 PM  
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Michelle I just assumed you were fabulously wealthy and hence could afford Austin, Florida, NYC and Australia all in one year. I'm not at all jealous! Ha ha! I'm certainly keen to go to the southern hemisphere at some point.

This evening over dinner we decided my special skill was booking holidays! I explained my hotel choices for Toronto and I'd booked the hornblower cruise and then I brought up mnsshp.
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2017: NYC and Orlando. Salzburg. Boston.
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2020: DLP.
2021: Jamaica. Rome.
2022: Orlando.
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