#shiplap

Chip and Jo 2.0

Day three in Austin was by far my favorite! Our day started bright and early with a quick road trip to Waco, Texas. For those of you who haven't already concluded from the title of this post, we spent our morning at the Magnolia complex. Both being avid fans of Fixer Upper (and Chip and Jo) I'm not sure who was more excited - Andrew or me.

Pulling into Waco, we quickly realized we were not the only people with the brilliant idea of visiting Magnolia today. After finding a parking spot a few blocks away, we walked up to see a never-ending line of people snaking across the property. There was also a yard with lawn games, covered picnic tables, and food trucks lining the perimeter. After getting a drink from one of the food trucks, we took our spot in line. Thankfully it moved pretty quickly and about a half hour later we were entering into the famed Magnolia Market.

Magnolia Market

This place was filled with anything and everything you could imagine Jo putting into one of her houses. Beyond all of the cute items, Andrew and I both noticed that every employee was extremely friendly and welcoming - the overall vibe was super enjoyable, even in the sweltering 100 degree heat. We spent quite a bit of time shopping and just walking around the complex.

After Magnolia, we decided to visit downtown Waco. Unfortunately, being the day before Independence Day, most places were closed. Our walk ended pretty shortly and we decided to head to In-N-Out for lunch. I did not realize that In-N-Out was in Texas, so this was a fun surprise for lunch.

The view from Mt. Bonnell

Later in the day, after getting back to Austin, we decided to go visit Mt. Bonnell. This is a lookout over the river at the highest point in Austin. Though it wasn't much of a hike, 100 steps in the heat was definitely exhausting. In the end, the view was worth it! After a little bit of sightseeing (including checking out mega-mansions lining the river) we ended the "hike" with some snow cones to cool off.

For dinner, we finally strayed from our Tex-Mex streak and went to BBQ. Even though I don't eat red meat, I am willing to suffer the consequences for a good pulled pork sandwich, so I was really excited to be going to one of the top BBQ places in Austin. Unfortunately, when we got there they were out of both pulled pork and chicken, so I had a disappointing turkey sandwich. Thankfully, Andrew really enjoyed his brisket.

Colorado River

After dinner we headed back to the hotel. Between the long line at Magnolia and the workout at Mt. Bonnell, the sun did a number on both of us today. Besides, strolling through downtown, we decided to take it easy for the night.

We have one more (half) day in Austin tomorrow before we fly back to Chicago tomorrow evening. Both Andrew and I hope you all have a safe and happy fourth of July tomorrow!

Best,
Kenzie

With Liberty And Justice For All

Today was our second day in Austin and we had a lot planned. When we were in Denver, we decided to visit the Colorado History Center and go to Voodoo donuts. Well, we decided to replicate that trip in a sense and started our day with a trip to The Bullock Texas State History Museum. As luck would have it, the first Sunday of every month is free admission day (we got the date right in Denver too when it was free admission) and we explored the museum. Now, we like history and the museum was massive, well designed and clean, but it wasn't very interactive. We loved Colorado's history museum because it was interactive and engaging throughout. Long story short, we breezed through the museum because there was too much to read and headed to Voodoo donuts. We figured some good donuts could salvage the start to our day.

The real event planned for the day however was a kayaking trip down the Colorado River. However, Austin is kind of weird and they refer to the river as a lake. There's a cool little spot down by the river where you can rent kayaks and paddle boards so we got ourselves a double-seater kayak and set on our way. Why we decided to get a double-seater I'll never know, but we someone managed to not flip it over. Even though Kenzie didn't get the memo that I was ready to hone my kayaking skills for the next summer Olympics, we didn't end up just going in circles. We were in the water for over an hour and then decided the heat (it's been 95+ with humidity each day) was too much and headed back to shore. My craving for food may or may not have also influenced our decision to prematurely end our kayak extravaganza.

With our kayaking trip behind us, we headed back to our hotel (Hyatt Place if you need a good hotel in Austin) and escaped the heat. Per the usual, we chose another Mexican restaurant for dinner and it was yet again another great choice. Each restaurant we've visited has had superb guacamole (we're gonna pitch a TV idea to producers so we can have a guacamole tasting show).

Now, if you've ever visited Austin or researched about the city, you would know that bats make this place famous!
No joke, there's a bridge on Congress Avenue where millions (so the locals say) of bats live and then come out for feeding at sunset. Hoards of people line the top of the bridge and more fuel in along the trail beneath it. Then out of nowhere, all these bats start dropping out of the bridge and flying out over the river and buildings in unison. Unfortunately, I don't have a super fancy camera, so my iPhone quality pictures don't do this spectacle any justice (there is a pic on the left though). If you're ever in Austin, definitely go to the Congress Avenue bridge at sunset to see this!

Tomorrow is the day we are most looking forward to though! Almost daily we watch Fixer Upper on HGTV because it's our favorite TV show. If you haven't watched it, I'm sorry for you and you need to ASAP. Anyways, we are going to Chip and Joanna's property tomorrow! Check back tomorrow for some awesome pictures from their property!

-Andrew

Holy Guacamole!

We're in Austin!!! Texas' capital has been on our travel wishlist for awhile. We are finally crossing it off during our 4-day weekend.

Delicious guacamole! 

Our trip started off pretty rough Friday night when Andrew lost his wallet. Thankfully, he had is passport and we were able to board our flight bright and early Saturday morning. After a quick flight and Lyft ride to our hotel, we were ready to set out and explore. The weather was 95 degrees, but felt like 105. It was unbelievably hot and muggy.

Our hotel is right downtown, near Lady Bird Lake (aka the Colorado River). We walked around near our hotel, did some shopping and ate lunch at a tex-mex restaurant. Not being too hungry, we decided to share guac, chilaquiles and dulce de leche pudding. The guac was easily top 3 of our all-time favorite.

Andrew enjoying the scenery at lunch. 

After shopping for a while we decided to head to 6th street. The street was lined with bars, almost all of which had live music. We walked by a bar selling 'Gino's East Chicago Pizza' and stopped in another for a drink and to listen to country music.

For dinner we walked from 6th street almost an hour to another Mexican restaurant south of the river. There were quite a few things on our to-do list in this area so we wanted to check it out. Of course, we ordered guac again. This guacamole was a little different - it had sunflower seeds and smoked chipotle cream in it. I was hesitant, but yet again, it was delicious. After these two meals, I am determined that Austin should be dubbed the Guacamole capital of the world.

One of the holes at Peter Pan mini golf

After dinner, we went to the locally famous Peter Pan mini golf. This was probably the most fun mini golf course (well, there are two courses) that I've seen. Even though Andrew kicked my butt (weirdly, the rules kept changing in his favor...?!)  it was still a blast!

By the time we got home it was nearly 10 p.m. and we were going on five hours of sleep, so we decided to call it a day. Andrew will fill you in on Day 2 in Austin!

Best!
Kenzie

Descending Back Home

Sadly, I am writing this post from the Denver airport (no, I haven't seen any Illuminati) as Andrew and I head back home. I have to say, Denver is an amazing city. It was a great long weekend and I definitely plan to come back.

Andrew and I started our morning dining on our Voodoo donuts, and man, were they good! I had the Diablos Rex - a chocolate cake donut with chocolate chips and an icing pentagram - and it was fantastic. Andrew had the Arnold Palmer - a plain cake donut with vanilla frosting and lemonade/iced tea dust with fruit loops in the middle - which he described as "interesting". We also had an old fashioned for comparison, but I still like Doughnut Vault in Chicago best.

After our breakfast, we headed to the Jeep to take a drive into the mountains and go hiking. Sadly, our expectations for the Jeep were not met, but the hike made up for it. We went to the Bear Creek Trail - it had amazing views was an easy 2 miles for us low-altitude, city slickers. It was great to be outside and explore; definitely not something we can do every day in Chicago.

On our drive back into the city, we decided to stop and explore the Red Rocks Amphitheater. The place was extremely crowded with people working out on the steps and tourists getting pictures. There really isn't much I can say to do justice to the view, so I will just have to let you look at our pictures.

By the time we got back into Denver, it was time to grab lunch and head to the airport. We walked along the mall one last time to Union Station, and hung out in the station (it is really pretty) a bit before we jumped on a train to the airport. I slept the whole ride, so I don't have much to say about that except its a lot comfier and cleaner than the el!

Andrew and I do not have our next trip planned - yet! Leave a comment if you have any suggestions on where we should visit. Thanks for following along on our trip! - Kenzie

Biscuits, Baseball and Bizarre Donuts

Hello!

Today was another great one here in Denver. We decided to hit up one of the most popular brunch spots in the city before going to the Diamondbacks vs Rockies baseball game in the afternoon. After conducting some research, we settled on a place called Denver Biscuit Company. It would have taken us almost an hour to walk there, so like any millennial, we relied on Uber. Now, considering this is one of the most popular places in Denver, we should have anticipated a huge wait, but that didn't really cross our minds right away. When we arrived, the wait time was between 60-75 minutes, but we decided to tough it out and see if this place was really worth all the rave. Let me tell you, IT WAS! This place was incredible and we got an enormous amount of food all for $22. I had biscuits & gravy while Kenzie had a gigantic cinnamon roll. Both meals were delicious and well worth the hour long wait we endured. If you are ever in Denver, his up the Denver Biscuit Company, you won't regret it!

After brunch we walked down the street a little bit to a famous donut shop called VooDoo Donuts. This quirky place creates some extremely interesting donuts with some not so PG names. If you're dying to know what I'm talking about, just Google their menu haha. We haven't had the donuts yet because we are saving them for breakfast tomorrow along with our leftovers from brunch today. Considering we waited forever for our brunch, we were a little crunched for time because the Rockies game started at 2:10PM. We once again relied on Uber and took it back to our AirBnb so we could quickly change and head out to the game. It only took us about 15 minutes to talk over to Coors Field. Our seats were located out in left field, so we had a perfect view of the entire field. The sun also had a perfect view of us in our seats and beat down on us the entire game. There was also like a 15 minute phase of light rain followed by gusty winds, but it was pretty cool to see it all happen. The Rockies made a valiant comeback in the bottom of the 9th, but unfortunately couldn't pull it off and lost 8-5.

Even though we were exhausted and ready to go rest, we made one last trip to the Taste of Colorado. You see, I found this super cool company called 1876 by Smirk that makes awesome Colorado themed shirts, hats and hoodies. I was initially hesitant on whether or not to buy stuff, so I decided to sleep on it. Well, the sleep paid off and we made a return trip and I walked away with a shirt and a hat. The entire Taste of Colorado is really cool and spread out over a large section of Downtown Denver. There are tons of different food options as well as shopping ones too.


Today was also the 2nd straight day that we saw someone with a pet rat out in public. There was man standing outside the Taste and he had 2 rats crawling on his shoulders (see pic on the above right). I'm not sure why they like their rats here, but it sure is interesting. We both really love Denver and all that it has to offer. Tomorrow we are renting a ZipCar and taking it to some hiking trails to fully experience Colorado before we head home. Yes, we did decide to go with the Jeep instead of a tiny little Honda, because who wants to go through the mountains in a small Honda? If you have a Honda, that is perfectly okay, but we went with the Jeep. All in all, the trip has been a huge success and we have loved this city.

Until tomorrow.....

Thanks!

Andrew

Labor Day Getaway

A few months ago, Andrew happened upon $36 flights to Denver, so here we are! Andrew and I are spending the long weekend in the Mile High City! 

Our weekend started at 4 a.m. this morning, when we arrived to the airport for our 5 a.m. flight. Even though we were pretty tired, we managed to pack a full day of activities in. From the airport we took the new RTD train into the city. First stop was exploring Union Station and the 16th street mall. The mall reminded us a lot of Madrid - a wide street made only for pedestrians (besides a free bus that goes up and down) with shops along both sides. We had some breakfast at a creperie and spent the rest of the morning checking out some of the shops. 

For the afternoon, we decided to check out the CELL museum - the Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab. On our way, we stumbled into Taste of Colorado. We checked out the festival, and then moved onto the museum. When we arrived at the Civic Center (Denver's museum campus), it turned out to be a "Free Saturday" and we didn't have to pay admission for the CELL. We learned a lot about terrorism and got to practice how to identify and prevent it as a civilian. 

After the CELL, we went to the Colorado History Museum. This was my favorite part of the day - the museum was very interactive and had a lot of great exhibits. We got to milk a cow, experience the Dust Storm, practice our ski jumps, and measure how many gallons of water we use in a day (which is a LOT more than the Navajo). There was also an 'Awkward Family Photo' exhibit, where Andrew and I were able to take our own awkward photos!

After the museum, we headed back to the apartment to rest our feet for a bit. We decided on an Italian place along the mall for dinner. Our meals were amazing and ginormous! After dinner we walked along the mall some more. We found out some sort of Comic-Con type convention is going on this weekend, and there are a ton of people dressed up in super weird costumes. We even saw one girl walking with a live rat sitting on her shoulder. 

Our first impression of Denver is that it is a great city! It is very clean, the people are friendly, and there seems to be a lot of fun things to do! Tomorrow we are going to check out some more museums and go to a Rockies Game! Its a short trip, so we are hoping to pack as much as possible into these three days! Check in tomorrow to hear what other adventures we find. 

Thanks!

Kenzie

Leaving Paradise

Sadly, I am writing this post as we pack up and get ready to head for the airport this morning. For the next few days we get to be tourists in our own city while Paige and Tim are still in Chicago.

We definitely went out with a bang during our last full day in Puerto Rico. After the long drive from Wednesday, we decided to stay near the condos. We filled the day with beach time, tennis and cards. I finally beat Andrew in tennis 6-5. (We did not play win-by-two by the 11th game because the heat had taken its toll on us.)

Also, yesterday was our biggest run-ins (yes, plural) with nature. I had expected to see a lot of exotic animals on this trip (I have been to St. Kitts - a few islands over - where monkeys basically run the island) but besides the stray dogs, chickens, horses and cows, the only exotic animals we had seen were little lizards ... until today. Walking back from the tennis courts, I had a run-in with a two and a half foot long iguana. Thankfully we both startled each other and went running in opposite directions. Upon arriving at our condo, we saw a few more, smaller iguanas basking in the sun.

Later that evening, nature decided to scare me again. As I walked into the bathroom to take a shower, I nearly stepped on a little, orange frog. Unfortunately, this little guy could not run away as easily as the iguana. Andrew and Tim captured him in a cup and I brought him outside where he could hop away.

We went all out for our final dinner in PR - visiting a restaurant at the St. Regis Resort! The place was beautiful. There was a nice golf course overlooking the ocean, villas, houses, a lake and a big hotel. The resort was so big, people get golf carts to ride around in just to get from place to place. The restaurant we ate at was in the golf clubhouse, overlooking a pool and then the ocean. Our meal was delicious too. If anyone ever wins the lottery, I definitely recommend a trip to St. Regis.


This week has-been very relaxing and so much fun. The island is beautiful and I am so glad I was to see it (esp. the caves - that was unlike anything I've ever experienced). While I know this is technically a travel blog, I also have a few words about the turmoil that we are unfortunately returning to in the in the states. It is heart-breaking to know that numerous lives could have been saved this past week if ignorance, hatred and racism did not exist. To know that instead of fighting foreign enemies, our own country is pitted against one another. While I know there will not be a resolution before we touch down in Chicago tonight (as much as I wish), I hope this past week has led to a turning point and we can all come together to combat the negativity and hatred that has led the country to this point.

- Kenzie