We left New Orleans about noon on Thursday and headed for Texas. Not a terribly eventful day. The driving hasn't gotten monotonous yet. It's just so interesting to see the landscape change. Leaving Lousiana we saw lots of water. This part of the country is a civil engineer's paradise. Bridges everywhere - over rivers, swamps, bayous. We saw some sugar cane fields. A few cotton fields. Got off the interstate a little bit in western Lousiana and drove through some small towns.
Landscape was pretty much prairie between Houston and Austin. We saw our first cacti, too. Arrived in Austin about noon on New Year's Eve. We stopped at a restaurant we had heard about called Gaby and Mo's and had a great lunch. We asked the waitress there what was going on for New Year's Eve. She said not many of the bars had anything planned. So our two choices were A2K, Austin's big downtown street party, or a big house party that the waitress invited us too. We chose the party! We saw the pictures of A2K the next day and the entire E 6th area (where a lot of the bars and music clubs are) was completely packed. It would have been fun - Lyle Lovett and Shawn Colvin were among the people performing there. But we had a very good (well, at least interesting) time at the party. More about that in a second.
We stayed at the Austin hostel, which is supposed to be among the best in the country. They were completely booked and, despite the fact that we had a reservation, there was some question whether we were going to get a room. That was a little irritating, but finally we got everything settled. We ended up in a large dorm room. These are usually single-sex, but because of the crowding ours was co-ed. Which was fine - until the snoring started - and some of our dormmates started screeching at the snorers in French.
(Note: Missy requires that I state that this section written exclusively by Jen) Before the party, we set out to get a good dinner. We'd had a couple Mexican places recommended to us. Both were closed, though, so Missy chose an alternative. She had read earlier in a newspaper that Jack in the Box had a 2 tacos for a dollar special. Her boundless enthusiasm for cheap food could not be contained, so I gave in. Of course, I had to remind her that if the world ended at midnight, this would be our last supper - deep-fried meat paste Jack in the Box tacos. Yum yum. Since she felt bad (okay - since I made her feel guilty), she bought me dessert at the 7-11 next door. She's so sweet!
From there we were off to the party. This party was thrown by some women - we're not exactly sure who. It was held in a small house near the University of Texas campus. They had completely cleared their first floor of furniture and had also built a big room out of 2x4's and plastic sheeting into their back yard. There were probably 125 people there. It was supposed to be a masquerade party - about a third of the people were dressed up. We were masquerading as tourists from Ohio. There was a table of fancy cheeses, fruit, and other food with a sign that said "In the spirit of the occassion, please hand-feed each other" and another that said if we caught anyone feeding themselves, we were to discipline them. One of the rooms - dining room, maybe - was a dance floor and the back yard room featured a bar and a fire. There were 2 countdowns to midnight. Someone got a little anxious, I guess, and there was champagne. And Prince was played, of course. We had a good time. Didn't do too much socializing, but it was kind of cool just to hang out in someone else's life for awhile. No digital pictures, unfortunately! But we did take a disposal camera (thanks, Patrice) because this event could not go unrecorded! So, see us in January for the photos! We stayed a little past midnight and then headed for the hostel (and the snoring). We had a long drive ahead of us the next day to West Texas! Stay tuned....