Grapevine Texas

On Labour Day weekend, Stuart, Laura, Danny and me headed about 4.5 hours 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 Laura 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 stick 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 Lubbock 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 in 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 get 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 Street 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 - certainly 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 famous 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 thoroughly 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!

August in a page

Now let me give you the low down of what we got up to last month but since I can barely remember I will have to use my photos in no particular order. Since returning to the states in late July, Stuart has been suffering from his broken ribs which he did at the water park in Italy and then not too soon after he did something to his foot - any way the combination of his injuries means he has been off cycling for about two months. Just last week he jumped back on the bike and could feel the break. I have been continuing all my training, although despite this I have developed a larger than satisfactory waistline. So as of last week have submitted myself to the weight watchers regime and so I am now obsessed by everything I eat and poor Stuart is having to cook and eat all my WW menus. Although I have to give WW credit, they are pretty tasty what we have had to date! Enough about that boring stuff, back to life before WW, when we had a good summer of eating out and partying!!

We went to try a famous breakfast place in Houston, called the Breakfast Klub. It is southern style cooking and you get strange combinations such as chicken wings and waffles, or fried fish and pancakes! None of us could convince ourselves to try one of these so we had more normal combinations such as green eggs and ham :) it was a fun place and was pretty efficient getting us through the queue. Even though we had to queue up outside we got given a menu and before we went in we placed our order, then paid, and then as soon as we sat down our food come, and the whole turn around is pretty quick. I would recommend it if you find yourselves near downtown on a Saturday morning and need a monster breakfast.

We got invited to a house party in the Heights for White Linen night in the Heights. We have never been and didn't really know what is was but essentially most people were wearing white, specifically white linen, and then walked along 19th Street. The streets were filled with stalls, mainly arty stuff, and lots of people. All the quirky shops along the street had doors open and you could go and browse and drink. On the street they had some of the cars from the car art parade that happens every year in Houston in about May time. However, wearing white is not a good idea with the amount of red wine that was getting drunk - the boys show off their medals!!

We had a couple of Friday evenings at the Gingerman pub meeting up with friends and a few sneaky kebabs at the Turkish place around the corner. The summer has been hot and sticky and dry ... but that hasn't stopped us doing things outside you just learn to sweat lots!

Following on the drinking theme, we went up to a brewery in Conroe called Southern Star for their open day. Conroe is not a short trip from home, it is some 45 minutes north of Houston. The brewery was in a small modern shed and there were about 100 people all sitting on benches and camping chairs with their glass. Basically because they don't have a liquor licence you have to buy your pint glass for $5 and then you were give 4 tokens (essentially five drinks!) Well I was the driver since I am not a beer fan but Laura, Rory and Stuart had to drink all their tokens in two hours! They stepped up to the challenge! They had some beer snacks in the form of a BBQ out the back where they served bratwursts and burgers. We had to get away quite sharpish as I needed to pick my car up from the garage back near home but Laura convinced us to have a quick shopping stop in Ross Dress for Less and TJ Max! On the trip home I had my foot to the floor and I had them all moaning in the back because they all needed a pee! Rory was especially bad and I was slightly nervous there was going to be an accident. What made it worse for all of us was the amount we were laughing at Rory for his suffering! As soon as I got to the garage he had leaped out of the car and ran towards the back of the garage behind the bins. All the mechanics chased after him wondering what he was doing - we just laughed! Meanwhile Laura and Stuart fought for the single toilet in the garage - I just had to apologise to the garage guy!

The rest of the afternoon was in the pool and Amy, John and the kids came around for swimming fun. It was a long evening although I didn't join them at the Ashford pub, I needed my beauty sleep.

We hosted a curry night for John, Amy, Bill and Marah. Stuart prepared three curries and they were all great. Everyone went away with doggie bags but really there wasn't that much left! John especially enjoyed the vindaloo!

I had a one night trip to Rio towards the end of the month, but that pretty much summarises August.

Tuscany in July

Directly after the IOW I went off to see Anne and Robin for a night before meeting Stuart at Luton airport the day before we flew to Tuscany. I was very excited about Tuscany - a weeks holiday on an olive grove with all my family. I knew it was going to be madness, but fun!

Stuart and I arrived in Pisa on the Saturday morning and our plan was to pick up the hire car and then go and do some sightseeing before we picked up mum and dad who were coming later in the day. Well all good plans get hiccups and we were told our hire car was not available until the afternoon because the one we had requested was at the car doctors and the only other automatic was not due in until later. We sat around for a while in a rubbish car rental shed, mind you at least it had air con, until eventually they said we could leave our luggage and go into Pisa to do some sightseeing. Well guess where we went? Yes, the leaning tower of Pisa, but before then we needed some lunch and had a magnificent Italian pizza with about 4 liter bottles of fizzy water (we were hot and dehydrated!).

Finally when we got back to rental shop they had our car - well actually they had a smaller version of our car! So it was going to be interesting getting four peoples luggage in a BMW 1 series! We may have looked cool but not too practical! Anyway we headed off to the beach and the supermarket - Mum and Dad had requested a bottle of whisky :) It was fab being in a foreign supermarket with all sorts of different foods :)

The drive to the villas took about an hour from Pisa towards Pistoia. We were just on the fringes of a small town called Cantagrillo on the Montalbiano estate. It was just in the hills and very beautiful and green and obviously plenty of olive groves!



There were two villas that we spread out in - kids and respective adults in one and then Mum, Dad and us in the other for the peace! We had lunches and dinners on the terrace and then soaked in the pool during the day. It was actually exceptionally hot, well in the thirties, and so it meant you could do much during the main heat of the day except seek shade, as Stuart did by the pool, or jump in the pool. The pool offered endless entertainment for the children and the adults, plenty of blow up toys and a diving board.

We did a morning trip to Leonardo di Vinci's museum in Vinci and saw some of his great inventions and some stunning scenery. The great thing about being with lots of kids you get treats like ice cream when you have been good :)










Angus, Dad and I played golf at a fancy course called Montecantini golf course. We all hired golf clubs and the first laugh was that Angus was given a set of left handed clubs - hmm they weren't going to work. Then we all took off - three of us - on the golf buggie. Since it was quite a squeeze one person steered while another one operated the accelerator! Dad feel in love with his borrowed wood unlike me it took me 7 holes to get accustomed to my clubs, but just in time to beat the boys!

We also did an outing to Montecatini the village on top of a hill. We took the funicular up and then walk around, having another ice cream! It looked like a really nice place to come for a lunch or dinner as there were table and umbrellas laid out in the square - lovely.











Sam, the kids and Stu and I went off for a day trip to a water park in Cecina some 2 hour drive on the coast. The water park was probably not worth the drive. It was full of Italian kids with very few slides, and it typically Italian style they were very poor at queuing. We managed to have a number of injuries there including Stuart breaking ribs, Thomas nearly getting concussed and coming away with an awful bruise under his chin and then I walloped my head off a slide! We went to a cafe on the beach for lunch and Mariska went for a dip in the sea that looked pretty cold but she insisted it wasn't too bad!






Our final sightseeing was going to Lucca, a walled city back towards Pisa. Again another pretty place with old buildings, squares and cobbled streets. I resisted the ice cream this time!!












One of our final meals we went to a traditional Tuscan dinner of pork - and I mean every bit of pig! It was interesting but I cant say I like all of it and I wasn't too sure about the pink pork loin we were served - so British I like it to be cooked!!

It was a wonderful week and went too quickly before we found ourselves back at Heathrow and flying back out to Houston.

Isle of Wight in July

You know I haven't done this for ages, but I decided it was about time I showed some of my pictures from July. So at the beginning of July I did a weeks training course in the UK on the Isle of Wight - yes I did say the Isle of Wight. For all the rock knockers it was a petrophysics course and was really good so would highly recommend it if you have access to Nautilus courses. It was a combination of classroom and field work, but actually we had more time in the sun than in the gloomy classroom!

For all those who have not been to IOW - it is populated with the elderly particularly on the south side of the island - well anywhere outside of Cowes! We were staying in Shanklin on the south-eastern side of the island.

First we got the ferry from Portsmouth to Ryde ...













Then we started to look at the rocks :) The weather was pretty fine and I only had to wear my waterproof jacket once (as a wind proof) and I borrowed a pair of gloves. I would hassen to add that all the others were in shorts and t-shirts at that point. Such a Houston wimp.

We had pretty leisurely lunches, mind you that was partly because the service everywhere we ate was dismal!


The hotel was also something special. It looked quite nice from the outside, and to be fair it was clean inside just with a little out of date decor! Mind you the bus load of granny and grandpa's in the dinning room when we arrived should have been a give away. Our first evening (and only) meal at the hotel was pretty awful. I had fish pie and overcooked peas - it would have been super if I didn't have any teeth! My room was a shoe box, actually so small I could even open the bathroom door fully or the wardrobe for that matter!






Finally, we could not come to the Isle of Wight and not go and see the Needles. Unfortunately for us the cloud was down but you can just about see the impressive chalk stacks. What you don't see is the really naff amusement park that is directly behind me when I am taking the photo - it does sort of ruin the atmosphere and the beauty of the place!