As mentioned earlier, Kim and I took off on Friday and headed down to Austin, Texas. After arriving at the airport we decided to wait 20 minutes for the next bus that would take us right into downtown. We arrived at our hotel (Hampton Inn) right at 3pm, and after heading up to the room, we were shocked at what we saw. The room was actually a two room suite with a couple flat screens, king sized bed, couches/chairs, a dining table, fridge, microwave, etc. It even had two bathrooms. And on top of it all, we were staying on a reward certificate so the whole thing was absolutely free.

Once we were settled in, we decided to start a walking tour of the city. We headed right to Congress Avenue and walked up it until we reached the Capitol grounds. We could see it from blocks away, and it takes up multiple blocks, so it was impossible to miss. We toured through the building and exited on the north side to continue walking up Congress to the University of Texas campus. I was pretty impressed with how clean and new everything on campus appeared. We also toured the Texas Memorial Stadium while there.

After that our legs were getting pretty tired, and we were very hungry, so we caught a ride on the ‘Dillo transportation system down to the famed 6th Street. We settled on having dinner at the Iron Cactus on their rooftop patio. The food was good and the margaritas got us in the bar crawling mood. So we opted to check out some of the many bars along 6th. Earlier in the day I commented that nearly every other building on the street was a bar, but at this time I realized it was more like every building on the street is a bar.

Once it got close to sunset, we walked down the the Congress Avenue Bridge to see the largest bat colony in North America emerge to feast on the numerous bugs along the banks of the Colorado River. At it’s peak the colony can reach 1.5 million bats! It is really amazing to see them come out from under the bridge in huge numbers. I tried my best with the photos, but unfortunately it seemed that most of the action was on the south side of the river.

After a quick stop back at the hotel to drop off the camera and grab our jackets, we headed to Stubb’s BBQ to catch an outdoor performance from Yonder Mountain String Band. I had heard of this venue year’s ago, I guess when O.A.R. first played it, and have always wanted to see it since. There is a small stage inside of the restaurant, but the fun part is the large outdoor stage behind it. That’s where this show took place, and we had a great time there. After the concert we again headed down to 6th Street to finish off the night. What an action packed day!

Austin on Dwellable

In my quest to visit all 50 states before the age of 30, I will be traveling down to Texas this coming weekend. Kim and I both took Friday off to get an early jump on things. We will be flying to Austin in the morning and staying one night there. Saturday we will be renting a car and driving down to San Antonio for another night. And then on Sunday we will complete the voyage by driving up to Dallas. Kim has a work function in Dallas most of next week, and I will fly back to Denver later that evening. We have a couple of things planned already, but are always up for some expert advice. Our travel itinerary can be viewed here.

Busy day at work. All I can think about is a trip to Alaska that we are going to take later this summer. I have a ton of miles with Frontier, so we used some to get round trip tickets to Anchorage. Seats were already filling up, so I made sure we got the ones we wanted. We’ll spend a little over a week there and in surrounding areas, mostly in those other areas. The trip happens to coincide with our one year wedding anniversary, so hopefully this is the start to a cool trend each year. As always I’m open to suggestions, but my planning has already begun. So far I’m thinking Denali National Park, Seward and Kenai Fjords N.P., and Homer, with different modes of transportation thrown in: train, boat, car.

I was on one of the least crowded flights of my life last night. We were on Southwest and after no one boarded in the business select group (seats A1-15), I estimated the crowd to be 45 strong. There are 60 total spots in the A boarding group and I didn’t think we had anymore than that. After everyone was on, one of the flight attendants took the final count of 46. I couldn’t have been any closer.

Anyway, the Boeing 737 that seats 137 at full capacity, was far from full. On top of that, Kim has been flying a lot for work recently and noted that the flight was one of the more crowded she’s seen. Yes, you read that correctly. Her flights earlier this week to Salt Lake City and back had on average 15 people on them. And these were on Frontier’s similar sized Airbuses.

Because of the low demand for flights currently, and the slow economy, there are some incredible deals out there for anyone with money to spare. I know we are looking to take some trips after ski season is over. Speaking of which, get some flights out to Denver for visit!

My travels for the year are finally over and for the third year in a row here is my year in cities:

• Denver, CO *
• Avon, CO
• Steamboat Springs, CO
• Tabernash, CO
• Keystone, CO
• Silverthorne, CO
• Cincinnati, OH *
• Loveland, OH *
• Breckenridge, CO *
• Canon City, CO
• Lee’s Summit, MO *
• Cedar City, UT
• Salt Lake City, UT
• Paris, France **
• Barcelona, Spain
• Cannes, France **
• Monte Carlo, Monaco **
• Nice, France **
• Pisa, Italy **
• Florence, Italy **
• Rome, Italy **
• Naples, Italy **
• Pompeii, Italy **
• Sorrento, Italy **
• Capri, Italy **
• Venice, Italy **
• Split, Croatia **
• Palermo, Italy **
• Minster, OH
• Baltimore, MD

Each city listed indicates at least one night spent there. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days. And those cities marked with ** are ones I did not actually stay in but were visited during our honeymoon cruise. We spent a good amount of time in each place and felt that they should be included.

Over the weekend we traveled to Baltimore, Maryland for the wedding of two longtime friends of mine, Mike and Carrie. I met Mike many years ago through O.A.R. and we’ve kept in touch for the years following. He’s the founder of OARfans.com, and because of the website he eventually met Carrie, moved to Baltimore, and the rest is history.

Their wedding ceremony and reception took place at the American Visionary Art Museum in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Baltimore. The museum is very funky place and was the perfect backdrop for their big day. They had a short ceremony on the central staircase of the museum. And from there, we had a cocktail hour, followed by dinner, drinks, and entertainment provided by a band that we’ve loved for years, Virginia Coalition. Needless to say, we had an amazing time and wish nothing but the best for the newly married couple.

I have some pictures that I’d like to share, but I’m having a problem with the gallery section of the site once again. Just as I was considering switching everything back to the old way, I have nothing but trouble today. Oh well, I’m sick of messing with it today, I’ll post them tomorrow.

Update: I’ve added the pictures directly inside of this post. Enjoy.

Kim and I traveled back to Ohio over this past weekend for a variety of events. One of which was one of the best Oktoberfest celebrations in the country, the Minster Oktoberfest. It had been years since I was last at this party, but once I arrived in the small town of Minster it all instantly came back to me. I immediately grabbed a milk jug of beer and headed for the main beer tent to take listen to the festive bands. And I wasn’t alone, according to their website 80,000 people join the celebration in the town whose population is not even 3,000 strong. It really is an amazing sight to see. Unfortunately, my camera batteries died, but luckily my mom was there to document the whole event. For Kim and I, we’ll be heading to another huge event this weekend, the Great American Beer Festival. I love fall!

The last stop of our cruise honeymoon was supposed to be Tunisia. I was really looking forward to stopping there, especially after getting all kinds of great advice on a previous posting. Unfortunately, while checking in we were told that our itinerary had been changed to remove Tunisia and add Palermo, Sicily. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed. We later found out that the change was made after previous cruisers expressed their opinions on the stop and suggested that the ship should stop in a different port.

I’m not sure if the change is really justifiable or not, but after our trip I made the suggestion to consider a port different than Palermo. Overall, I was not impressed by this city at all. Perhaps it had a little to do with my bitterness toward the itinerary change, but I honestly felt that the city was dirty and rundown. Sure there were some interesting sights to see, but we found them to be not very well kept up and were surprised to find graffiti covering even some of the most famous landmarks. After being disappointed on our walk around town, we decided to take a bus trip to the nearby town of Mondello and to visit the beach there. Though it was a bit crowded (and a little dirty too) it provided a much nicer day than Palermo.

One nice result of the itinerary change, was that our ship had extra time on our day after our stop in Croatia, so we cruised past the island of Stromboli. This island is home to one of three active volcanoes in Italy. The captain stopped the ship for a half hour or so, as we took in the frequent eruptions of the volcano in the nearly pitch-dark night. It was pretty hard to photograph, but I was able to balance the camera on railings and set the exposure to a second or two to get a couple of decent shots. Here are some of those pictures and a few from Palermo and Mondello.

The second to last stop on our cruise was in Split, Croatia. As mentioned in this planning post, we participated in our only cruise sponsored excursion of the trip, an Off Road Safari. On this trip we took turns driving manual transmission Land Rovers through the countryside, to the top of mountains, along the Cetina River, and through twisting village roads. We also were fed twice with some traditional, but still familiar, foods that were very enjoyable. We also got to jump into the frigid waters of the Cetina and have great views of the entire area. Though we had nothing to compare it to, everyone we were with said it was the best excursion they had done, and some folks did an excursion at every stop.

After the excursion was over, we took some time to explore the town of Split and especially see parts of Diocletian’s Palace. We didn’t have time to go into any of the buildings, but it was still interesting to see more ancient structures and compare them to the others we had already seen at other stops. Overall, we felt that Croatia was a beautiful country that was not nearly as touristy as other spots, and we would love the chance to go back and do more adventurous activities.

Hard to believe it, but I’ve been out of high school for over ten years now. This weekend is officially my ten year high school reunion weekend. Fortunately I am back in Cincinnati to take in some of the festivities, including a big football game tonight with arch-rival school Elder, also my dad’s alma mater. Looking forward to seeing some good high school football. Go Crusaders!