Bella Vita Handmade Jewelry: Belated Honeymoon

Matt and I had a really amazing summer. We took a trip home to visit family in early July and then after that we were committed to house sitting in Norman until mid August. We never had time or extra money to take our honeymoon last summer after our wedding so I was determined to take one this year! So when he was done house sitting, we hit the road!
We started out with a night in McKinney with our wonderful friends and their baby. From there we hopped on down to Austin to meet up with a new friend of Matt's and his wife. I was a little skeptical of spending all this time with friends but it couldn't have been more perfect. Our hosts in Austin were amazing and took us around to some great places! I even got to catch up with one of my old friends that lives there. Austin is HUGE! I had no idea it was such a big city. A cool city, but big.
From Austin, we packed up and headed down to Port Aransas, TX to hang out on the beach for a couple of days. We stayed at the Oldest Inn in town, called the Tarpon Inn, FDR stayed here back in his day! It was a sweet place, very old, no tv's or telephones. They want people to escape city life while they are staying at the Inn. We rented beach cruisers, ate some great food, ate some bad food, walked the jetty's, did some shopping and hung out with some locals. This small little beach town is very charming!
After our two days at the beach we headed to San Antonio. I was excited about visiting all these places but I think I mostly looked forward to San Antonio. Once again, I found one of the oldest hotels for us to stay in. Our hotel, The Menger, was right beside the Alamo and very convenient to the River Walk. San Antonio is very charming as well. I really was impressed with all these Texas towns. Until this trip I had never been south of Dallas. We spent a lot of time walking around the river walk, swimming in the hotel pool, being tourists, eating good food, and enjoying drinks.
We took some advice from our hotel bar tender and walked to the King James Historic District and found a good dinner on our first night. Day two was a bit more touristy... we got up early, as always, and walked to the Mexican Market, I heard it was the largest outside of Mexico City. If you know me at all, you know I love my imports. It was hard not to spend too much money!
From there we went to the top of the Tower of America's which was an anxiety attack waiting to happen and a complete waste of money. After that we were pretty disappointing and decided to go have a good lunch. We went to Boudro's Texas Bistro which was a restaurant I found by reading a blog a friend suggested to me. It was wonderful! Good drinks, great service, and delicious food! And a local joint. I was a bit disappointed in how commercial the River Walk was... to be so pretty and unique but to be so full of chain restaurants that I would never eat at. But, we found this local gem and enjoyed our time there. After enjoying a delicious lunch we went back to the hotel for a swim and then changed our clothes and headed back out for the evening. We stopped at the Hotel Havanna which was a suggestion by our Austin friends. This is the cutest boutique hotel with two bars, one downstairs and only lit by red candles, and one up stairs in a beautiful atrium that is naturally lit during the day time. We ended our night in a Mexican restaurant listening to a great local band, I never caught the name of them but the lead singer kind of sounded like Jeff Tweedy of Wilco.
We had such an amazing trip. We were both ready to come home but after being home for a week I wish I could be back on our Texas Honeymoon.

A day of riding bikes. This was a great way to explore the island. We enjoyed walking but it was taking us forever to get places.


Our Inn for the stay in Port Aransas.

The boats. We found a restaurant/bar right on the docks. It was fun to sit and watch the boats.


Potters on Cotter. We stopped in this shop while on our bike ride. I didn't want to carry around a bag so we decided to come back later in the evening. We ended up taking a bottle of wine and shared it with the owner and hung out with some locals for a while. It was such a great time.