Well Traveled, Well Read

Austin, Texas is one of my favorite cities. I spent four years in college there and another three years for graduate school, and my husband and I have frequently taken weekend trips there over the years to attend Austin City Limits, visit family, enjoy the lake views, and pretend we are young enough for the night life scene. More recently I have enjoyed experiencing Austin with my daughter, and I have to say Austin is a perfect destination for the tween set. So here are my top suggestions for Austin with tweens. What to Do: We loved renting boats at Zilker Park Boat Rentals (bonus that it’s right next to a playground if younger kids are with you and the Barton Springs Pool for a dip) and paddling around. It’s so fun to be out on the water, and it’s a nice way to get some exercise in. This was also a great opportunity for people and dog watching – people jumping into the water, people playing music, dogs in life vests, people paddle boarding, etc. Bonus points that it was a super e

Sometimes just staying in a nice hotel can be a vacation in and of itself – no cooking, no cleaning, no household projects hanging over your head. My husband and I recently took a few nights at a hotel and read books by the pool, ate food cooked by someone else, drank champagne, and played board games and Gin Rummy. We also like to go as a family and with family friends to Hyatt Lost Pines Resort (outside of Austin) where they have a lazy river, a nice pool, tons of children’s activities, and wide-open spaces to lounge or run and play. This post is dedicated to those lazy vacations where you don’t see much beyond the hotel. If you are in the market for something light and beachy, something you can fall asleep reading by the pool and maybe even lose your place in without it mattering too terribly much, I suggest these three breezy novels: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter begins in a postage stamp sized coastal village in Italy where a young hotel proprietor dreams of attracting glamo

Last summer we dropped our daughter off at camp for a week right in the heart of the Texas hill country. Deciding that we could best capitalize on this time together by not spending it with more time in the car, we rented a house in Fredericksburg, Texas and spent the week there.  I confess, we were tired, and this was our first kid-free trip since before COVID, so we spent a lot of time napping, reading (me), playing the guitar (my husband), and napping some more. I went out to breakfast one morning, polished off four cups of coffee then went back to our rental, crawled back in bed and went right back to sleep. That said, we were there for a week and got out every day to explore, stretching out what would otherwise be a fun and relatively busy weekend trip into a slow-paced week. If you are planning a visit, I have you covered on what to do, where to eat, and of course, what to read. What to Do… There are lots of vineyards and tasting rooms in the Fredericksburg area, so this is