Happy new year! New year, new enthusiasm for updating the blog. The last post was heralding the end of summer in Poland, and now here I am back on the sofa in Belfast wondering where the year went. So our new year’s resolution is to try and combine our enthusiasm for travelling, eating and giving opinions when no-one asked for them with a new found effort in getting those posts up!

Our big adventure for the last half of the year was a week in sunny Texas, living the good life in Austin and falling in love with the city. As usual we packed a lot into our trip and looked forward to blogging each little detail that made the city so special… But a few Tweets and a few months later and we still haven’t dared tackle the mountain of posts that deserve to be written.

So – in a bid to clear out the old to welcome in the new – we’ve decided that we’ll just have to do a quick run through of the whole week… and of course try harder next trip!

Before breaking into a bullet point list, let me mention the highlight of our trip (and the reason we were in Texas in the first place) – we were thrilled to invited to my friend Chris’ wedding to his beautiful Texan bride Jenny. It was a gorgeous day in the grounds of the period Barr Mansion in Austin – and to say the location (and the food!) was amazing is an understatement. Perfectly cooked rare steak at a wedding? Unbeatable. Oh and carrot cake? Fantastic. Jenny is very talented photographer, so check out her blog – particularly if you are in the Austin area!

Ok, let the datablast begin!

• Breakfast at Gordon Ramsay, Heathrow Terminal 5 – pricey tea, so-so food, but the peace, quiet and complimentary papers would take us back.
• Hitting busy roads of Houston, immediately following 9 hour flight, just after sunset in a left hand drive car was a little unnerving, incredibly exhausting…
• … so it was a relief to reach the very cushy (and cheap!) Hilton Garden Inn Houston Galeria
• Next day was the beautiful old houses of Galveston…
• …and the space age relics of the Nasa Space Centre
• Onwards to Austin and the Wee Cottage we were staying in – a cute and ultra cheap little house near the trendy SoCo area of the city
• Fantastic to meet up with Rachel, one half of fellow bloggers Boots In The Oven for a little tex mex before booze and bowling at the spectacular High Ball bowling alley.
• Rachel also for accompanied us to Smitty’s Market barbecue in Lockhart – how come everyone in Austin seems so skinny with this near by?!
• The Mexican Martini – our new favourite drink. We’ll post our ultimate recipe soon.
• Loved visiting Whole Foods flagship store – I don’t think there is anything like this near Belfast…
• Took a drive out to the epic watering hole at the the Hamilton Pool
• Watermelon and cucumber sorbet from Amy’s Ice Cream was a revelation… might try to replicate this come summer…
• Spoilt for choice for great tex mex spots, burgers. Oh and cheese fries made for an embarassingly great experience.
• Torchy’s Tacos made the best breakfast tacos – perfect with a hangover too.
• Of course we went to see the Austin bats! Just don’t ask how the photographs turned out.
• The Banh Mi from Lulu B’s food truck were so good, they have almost single handedly got us planning a trip to Vietnam.

Well, to say that that abbreviated list isn’t doing Texas – and Austin in particular – justice, is a gross understatement. Truly have we never found ourselves in such a green, relaxed city, packed with friendly people, amazing food options and a great attitude to keeping itself unique.

Keep Austin weird, we’ll be back!

We got up at 0750hrs and found a gorgeous sunny day waiting for us. We showered, packed and headed down for the basic inclusive breakfast – cereal, pastries, toast, apples, tea, coffee and orange. Excellent value and I showed my appreciation by overfilling my cereal bowl and spilling milk all over the counter.

We took a quick look at the Downtown Disney shopping area but found it didn’t open until 1030 so headed back to the California Adventure park, directly opposite Disneyland. The park opened before the scheduled opening time and we filed inside and waited patiently for the themed streets to open along with a fairly small crowd.

One family was chosen to ‘open’ the street and we marched along behind them towards the Hollywood Hotel – the California spin on the Tower of Terror we had seen under construction in both Tokyo and Paris! After being led around the intricately detailed hotel lobby by a most amusing maths teacher playing the bell boy role, we found ourselves on the short but sweet vertical drop ride. To be honest, the building was more impressive that the ride, but it was still an exciting spectacle.

California Screamin’ is the iconic roller coaster in the Pier area of the park. The view from the top of blue skies and snow capped mountains in the distance was truly special – and the ride was pretty good too.

We also went on the Maliboomer and some sort of spinning rocket ride, both of which were on the poor side of ‘meh’ so it was a good time to get some food. We settled on a corn dog – some sort of sausage in a thick corn batter. I liked the batter, Laura liked the sausage – oh aren’t we just the picture of happiness!

We then sat and relaxed by the pier, enjoying the sunshine. The High School Musical show then rolled up behind us and eventually we moved on to the big wheel. This proved the scariest ride for me – the continuous rocking of the gondolas leaving me somewhat queasy… Maybe it was the corn dogs?

Next up was the Grizzly Mountain ride – the longest queue of the day but left us laughing and soaked.

The mix of attractions at California Adventure is bizarre at times, and we found ourselves in a sour dough factory and then the tortilla factory. The latter particularly impressed us with machines that flattened tortillas in a single squash! Maybe you had to be there. But it was amazing.

One particularly unique feature of the park is the wine tasting station. We were a little disappointed to find that it contained European wines, rather than showcasing California bottles, but the glasses were big and the crackers were free and plentiful! Unfortunately, the wines were not the most exciting, nor the best quality – but it was nice to be able to sit in a theme park, sipping wine and watching the Sun go down over the pier.

Finally we left the park at around 1830 and sauntered through the Downtown Disneyland shopping precinct, picking up a few things from Sephora at prices a little cheaper than at home in the UK , before heading back to the hotel to grab a taxi. This was arranged by the hotel and cost $100 from Disneyland to LAX. We skipped the tip after the driver nearly hit a Japanese couple and then proceeded to brake harshly in front of them to disrupt their efforts to take photographs of his number plate.

There is no question, LAX is the worst airport in the world. After a long, slow queue at the Air New Zealand desk, we then proceeded to a long queue to check our boarding pass and another long queue at the security gate. The Departures area is tired and gloomy and after mass confusion over the gate due to poorly updated signs, we were relieved to get on our plane, albeit 70 minutes late.

By this point we were both shattered and pleased to get some hot supper – a delicious hot beef stew and a rather fatty chicken thigh. The in flight entertainment system was broken (for which we both received a NZD $60 voucher – wow) but it was no matter, as we both managed to get some on and off sleep.

Best. Stopover. Ever.

Waking up at 5am is made so much easier by the knowledge that you will not be back in the office for almost two months… In spite of that, we still ended up in our usual pre-flight rush, throwing things in bags, double checking passports and running out to the taxi.

We arrived at Belfast City Airport with plenty of time to spare – although any chance of relaxing was crushed by the realisation that I had neglected to bring the correct debit card to claim our pre-booked foreign currency. This was a made it impossible to claim the money from Travelex, and as their information line was not open until 0900hrs we had to leave this problem until we touched down in London after a short 1 hour flight.

There we stopped for a hurried Krispy Kreme (very disappointing – no classic cream filled glazed doughnuts!) and then onto Departures where our flight was immediately delayed from 1130hrs to 1300hrs. Not a great start, but it gave us time to concentrate on the money situation – thankfully a few phone calls arranged for the original card to be credited, and a new card to be debited at the same advance booking rate. After a long wait at the Travelex desk (the situation seemed to cause a little confusion) we were finally flush with US, New Zealand and Australian dollars.

The flight left shortly after 1300hrs, and although we were a little cramped, the overall flight was fine. We had expected to be wowed by Virgin Atlantic, but the comfort level wasn’t the greatest.

The food was generally good – as well as lunch and dinner, we were given pretzels, a sandwich wrap and ice creams. That kept us quiet while we sat through Ratatouille (terrible) and Superbad (pretty good).

The flight yielded beautiful views of the icy valleys of Canada, and then – after hours of cloud – the hills and mountains of California, and finally the Hollywood sign above Los Angeles.

We arrived 70 minutes later than scheduled, which was not bad after the late start. Unfortunately we weren’t given an immigration form during the flight which delayed our exit from the plane and left us at the end of a 90 minute queue through immigration – top tip, sit by the exit on any flight to the US!

The next annoyance was that the expected $40 fare from LAX to Disneyland was simply not the case – perhaps we were looking at out of date information? $110 dollars later we arrived at Desert Inn and Suites hotel in Anaheim, directly across the road from the park.

We raced straight to the Disneyland half of the park (occasionally running the wrong way – well we had been up for almost 24 hours) and finally got through the gates at 1930. Had we not already purchased a two day pass, we probably would have gone straight to bed – but thankfully we persevered and managed to ride Splash Mountain, a couple of times round our old favourite Buzz Lightyear (Laura definitely the best!) and also on the Space Mountain which outclassed it’s namesakes in Paris and Tokyo!

We then grabbed a (incredibly lame) pretzel and watched a swing band and some dancers before finding a good spot for the fireworks. So glad we did as they were the best we had ever seen and really brought it home that we were starting out on this big adventure!

We then headed back to our £40 a night room, which was fantastic value and we appreciated being able to crash out in separate double beds after a 27 hour day.