ours north of Dallas to a little place called Grapevine. Laura had heard about it from a friend and so we decided it would be fun to check it out. We decided to leave on the Saturday morning to miss the Friday night rush out of Houston and that worked quite well. We took off up I45 when L
aura said oh Christie never comes this way because of the traffic - useful comment when there were no other options left!! Fortunately it wasn’t a problem as there was no real traffic to talk off. What happened on the journey up - we saw a flying palm tree and a big statue of Sam Houston. We stopped for lunch at place that said it was famous for its jerky. I have always been sceptical of the dried out lengths of meat, but the lady gave us a taste of their buffalo jerky and it was really good - not as chewy and dried out as I expected it to be. So my lunch was a s
tick of buffalo jerky and Laura's was a bag of kettle corn (with me occasionally helping her out)!! Just around Dallas we narrowly avoided two sheets of corrugated iron in the middle of the freeway followed by a whole car bumper!
We just managed to catch the end of the Grapevine farmers market but no in time to try anything unfortunately so it was straight on to the tasting rooms. We decide a plan - hit them in order of closing hours that meant the first one we went to was called Homestead Winery and actually it turned out to be the most fun! They stocked Texan wines from their vineyard in Lubbo
ck quite some distance from Grapevine. For $5 you got four tasting and they were really generous pouring’s, actually after the second I was starting to feel tipsy! Although I didn’t really like any of the wines - too sweet - it was worth a taste for the money. The tasting room was in an old house and the floors were all squint and walls covered i
n people’s signatures and messages. It was certainly different not to mention the people were very 'special' :) The second wine tasting was at La Bodega Winery. It was in a different league to Homestead in a smart building with a patio outside include misting fans to keep you cool and water features. The wines were a mix from all over the 
place but in trueness to Texas we tried to stick with the Texan ones where possible and in amongst a few shockers there were one or two that were quite nice and of course I can’t remember what they were called! We then went to Su Vino on the Main Street. This was just a bar looking like place and all the wines were bought by them and then some were infused with fruits and other flavours! One of the 
nicest was Almond Champagne (well marzipan sparkling wine). But we did try ones like 'Island Paradise' with kiwi and Pear flavour!! We met up with one of Laura's colleagues, Christie and her sister, for Mexican. Then there was just enough time to hit another winery at Farina's again on the Main Street. It was a nice place and the wine 
wasn’t too bad either. So we managed 4 of the 5 wineries in the centre of Grapevine before heading off to the local sports bar full of college kids! We then had the mile walk back to the hotel (slightly up hill) to Danny's dismay!! It really wasn’t too far at all but his shoes were hurting :(
Sunday's plan was to catch the vintage train to the Fortworth Stockyards. The train was not leaving Grapevine until 1pm so we had a 
lazy morning taking a long breakfast at the hotel - Laura and Stuart has great fun making Texas shaped waffles and Danny enjoyed munching down 6 sausages (I was on bran flakes due to weightwatchers and a night of wine!). We sat by the pool reading our books before heading to get on the train. However, we nearly didn’t ge
t on, they were sold out but the lady said she could sell her special reserve tickets - luckily for us! The train was old but still a diesel engine, not steam. There was no air con but you could sit inside with all the windows open or in the outside carriages. We chose inside. The seats on the train were really cool as you could flip the back of the seat to change the direction you were sitting it 
so that meant we could face each other as a four. However, leg room was minimal and it involved putting your knees between one another -Laura kept telling me off for fidgeting!! The train went very slowly and on the way they did a pretend train robbery. There were guys on horse that came out of the bush firing fake guns. The train stopped and the robbers came on pretending to take everyone’s money but they were really handing out stickers to 
the kids. Then the sheriff came and chased them off! Finally we got moving again and some hour and half later we ended up in the stockyards - tourism at its best!!
The Fortworth Stockyards is really centred on one street called Exchange S
treet and there are plenty of saloon bars and cowboy shops all the way along. We went and tried out a couple of hats! I also decided to sit on a longhorn for $5. It was me and the children!! I asked the lady how long they had to stand out in the sun before I got on and she said two maximum before a new one comes out. Randomly there was also a camel walking through the stockyards - certainl
y not native to Texas!! We did not get much time there as we had to catch the train back to Grapevine but we did manage a stop at 'Billy Bob's' - I can only describe it as a huge warehouse with bars, arcades, a bull ring, dance floors for line dancing and yes about anything else you can image in one place. On the walls there are all these hand moulds of famo
us people. Some had really big hands, while others just looked really weird!
The train journey back was long and hot and we all managed to pass out although we all had stiff necks when we woke as there 
was no head rests! As we were getting back towards Grapevine the train conductors start to play a game of seeing how many cars we can get to honk their horns at the level crossings. So the idea was everyone on the train makes arm signals like you are pulling a train horn out the window at the cars. I thoroug
hly enjoyed it - all the others just starred in amazement :)
That evening, although it was a holiday weekend everything in Grapevine seemed to close because it was a Sunday so we struggled to find anywhere semi decent to eat. In the end we ended back up at the Mexican place for a second evening. It was good and we all chose different things off the menu - including Danny choosing an enormous Mexican pizza! The night ended in a bikers bar!
On Monday we were going to take our time back to Houston and went to stop by Grapevine Lake. It is a man made lake and looked very similar to
Lake Travis near Austin - actually it was quite spooky how similar. There were lots of people power boating and some swimming and some preparing for a day of BBQ'ing on the lake shore. From there we went into Fortworth itself and the centre was quite pretty with some older building and modern sky scrapers. Stuart and I picked up our touristie fridge magnets
and we went for a lunch at a place called the Flying Saucer. It is a chain and apparently there is one in Houston. It serves over 200 beers and the beer menu is enormous! Laura decided to join the UFO Club as it is 
called and she has to drink her way through all 200, but only 3 per visit!!
It tooks us 4 and half hours home and we missed all the bad weather Houston had that weekend!
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