Austin Shenanigans Part 2

Ni Hao from the Wandering Berkmans!

No, we're not back in Taiwan.  This post is brought to you today by Pho Please, our neighborhood Vietnamese restaurant in Austin where I have been living lately.  Because there is boba tea.  

But our greeting is in Mandarin Chinese bc boba tea originally comes from Taiwan.  Look it up!   https://www.google.com/search?q=where+is+boba+milk+tea+from&oq=where+is+boba+tea&aqs=chrome.7.0j69i57j0l6.8815j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 Ok, more info than you need in a simple greeting.  Fair enough.  

I've been holding down the fort here in Austin (and drinking inordinate amounts of aforementioned boba tea-- hot jasmine tea with boba.  You'd be amazed at the amount of grief I get around the country for this request.  But that's a story for another day) while Don has been soaking up the sun and sand and catering to Birthday Girl Patsy Tran's every wish  (as it should be) in lovely Playa del Carmen, Mexico.  Today I received a video of them enjoying mango rum smoothies by the pool.  Another day with mimosas.  True mother/son bonding going on.  I suspect he's censoring the pic of her twerking on the bar bc he knows it might make it to the blog.  

Some of you may be wondering "Is this retirement life we're living now all drinks and sun and lounging and general foolishness? "  An excellent question that I'll address now.  Because we do get asked "What do you DO all day??" Don gets this question a lot, being newly retired.  (I've been at this for a bit and y'all have stopped wondering about me. )

The travel is wonderful, the new experiences in new cities can't be beat but what we also appreciate about this time in our lives is... time.  Time to get the sleep we need (Don is especially happy not to have to be anywhere at any time), time to get the exercise we need and enjoy (yoga every morning almost without break for about a year now followed by a walk), time to read (we just finished and recommend these btw), 

---time to plan our next trip!  Planning takes a long time--- searching for and booking flights and Airbnbs (or coordinating with friends to camp out on their couches!), making an itinerary, tying up loose ends here in the US before we leave (securing health care, monitoring our house sale, setting up mail forwarding), chronicling our shenanigans.  A byproduct of this-- the kind staff at the local UPS store know us by name.

(insert shameless plug here: check out reviews and pics of all the Airbnbs/Vrbo we've stayed in since 2017, and information on how we came to plan this adventure,  on our website    http://liveabroadreviews.com/ )

The new local library is an amazing place to get this all done.  Nerd dream...

Yeah ok cry us a river but it all does take time!  We find our days fly by.  And we're very, very grateful for all the opportunities we have.  Oh and did I mention naps? 

Most of our exercise comes in the form of walks around beautiful Lady Bird Lake, a block from our condo.  Everyday we try to find something different on this walk.  Yesterday's wow and this posting's SOL:

Count them-- 18!  These turtles know how to sunbathe.

As part of our planning, we did some study with the eminent NomadicMatt  https://www.nomadicmatt.com/  who, as a 25 year old with an MBA, decided to  put it all aside in 2006 to travel full time on the cheap and blog about how he does it.  Don has been following him for some time and went a little fan-girl on Matt on seeing him in person (careful meeting your heroes! Naw, Matt was great).  We gleaned some helpful advice, took down some key websites for our needs and met some interesting people of all ages also bitten by the travel bug.  

 

Within this rigorous schedule, we did sneak in a visit to San Antonio, about 1.5 hours away.  

Highlights included-

-- The River Walk-  sure it's full of tourists but it's just so darn pretty, especially at night.  And for lunch

 

 -- the architecture!  Completely unanticipated seeing so many beautiful buildings, most from the late 1800's.  And the last little bit of the Alamo.

  

  

--the birds!  It was like a scene from.... The Birds!! And their birdcall was really cool until it was deafening

 -- going to the Tobin Center to listen to National Geographic photographer Charles Hamilton James talk about his photos from around the world and specifically the rainforest in Peru, of which he bought a portion to help conserve from loggers.  And then his story became more complicated...   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATCIvO7N5Uk

The photos were amazing and it helped that this Brit was a part-time comedian... or at least should be.  Check out his Instagram @chamiltonjames 

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Austin still has delights to behold for us:

Mayfield park with its resident peacocks 

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-- LBJ Library on the U of T campus  

I've seen a few presidential libraries and we agreed what made this one especially interesting is that LBJ (secretly, urg) recorded all of his phone calls while in office and left them to the library.  You can pick up a phone in multiple areas around the library and listen to him speak with world leaders, MLK, Jackie Kennedy 2 days after the assassination,  journalists, J Edgar Hoover... the list goes on.  Pretty wild.    https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/secret-white-house-tapes/research-the-tapes .   Say what you will about LBJ and the Vietnam War (or the American War, as we learned it is called in Vietnam), we understand,  but it was pretty impressive to see this list of all the positive things his administration accomplished in his time in office.

-- Women's March on the Capital--   because I just had to.

The Paramount Theater in town offers its support.  

              

We have another week and a half to enjoy the city and a visiting friend (Hey Page!) before we take off for Lisboa.  Thanks for following along!  

Don and Monica

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