Friday, July 10, 2015

Gettin' Our Kicks: Judith’s Diary Entries #3


June 28 to July 6


Highlight for each State: 

Cal.  Bluest sky
Ariz.  nicest clouds
New Mex.  pass with care
Texas   I can see for miles or bugs eat you
Louisiana   Bridges and bayous


Diary

June 28, Austin
This was a get stuff and otherwise relax day. Very enjoyable with Jerry and Kate.

June 29, Austin
After a slow morning we got to look behind the doors of the library where Jerry and Kate work. This was super impressive: we were able to see and even touch those old books, some written on skin and even hand written ones. We saw the curators lab, where books and photographs are repaired and conserved. It was great to get to see and hear how this is done. In the public part there is a Gutengerg bible, the pages of which are being turned every month. Everything we saw there was very exciting.

June 30, Austin
We had another quiet day, with some late lunch snack at a nice little bar recommended by Ron. In the evening we went out for my birthday dinner together with the kids. They hade made a reservation at a restaurant owned by Sandra Bullock, with a waiter who gave us the comedy dinner (we didn't know we booked that). He explained each and everything about the dinner very extensively, even the three kinds of salt that came with the bread and the (of corse) unsalted butter after we sat down. Kate and I had quite some giggles... The food was perfect there as well as the Champagne we had. All in all: it was a great birthday.

July 1, Austin to Baytown (Houston)
There was quite some rain in the area, but we were lucky and were only rained on once, before we arrived at the hotel.

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July 2, Baytown to Lafayette
Not a very exciting ride, but at least we saw some nice lakes on the side of the road. When we got towards Louisiana the area got a little greener and there were actually really nice smells. It was very humid today, but we had some clouds, which was good, because temperature got up to 95.
When we sat outside of the hotel and had our (well deserved) beer, we watched this very beautiful lizard climbing up at the entrance door of the hotel. Dennis wanted to take a picture, but, obviously, this lizard didn't like cameras and went. Too bad, now its beauty will not be conserved.

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July 3, Lafayette to New Orleans
It was a hot and very humid day, which didn't make riding a lot of fun. We went secondary roads, saw big properties, a lot of green, and a lot of water - lakes, rivers, bayous....
Lunch was in a gas station that seemed to be the center of the village: it was general store, gas station, restaurant (selling beer, too), and meeting point. Tis was pretty nice.
Arriving in New Orleans we had to ride our bikes through the French Quarter, which needed a lot of concentration, the roads being bad an everyone being in the streets. We are staying in a very nice hotel there (Dennis: it has a funny French name) which really looks like an old French hotel. The funny French name is Richelieu.

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July 4, New Orleans
We had a nice day strolling through the French quarter, met a couple of nice people and watched the fireworks at the river. They had two barges on the river that shot exactly the same things in the air: "the dueling barges". This was very impressive.

July 5, New Orleans
Another nice, but hot and humid day. We walked through the warehouse district and the museum area. There they have a world war 2 museum. This building is super impressive.
Back along the river and dinner in a jazz bar.

July 6, New Orleans to Natchez
Again it was hot and humid in New Orleans when we got on the road. We went towards Baton Rouge and spent an hour going through the suburbs - not nice. Once we were in Mississippi, it got a lot nicer: streets suddenly had curves. Haven't found a motto for Mississippi yet.

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