We kept with the current plan of avoiding the interstates so rather than heading on the I-30, we hopped on the state roads and headed into Texas Hill Country.
The first town we stopped at was Gruene. The town was full of people, so busy that we decided to stop and see what was going on.
Gruene was originally a town founded by imigrant German farmers and you can see this in the little Germanisms you see around the town (you'll see some of these in the video!).
We followed the crowd of people into Gruene Hall, the oldest dance hall in America (or so it claims). There was a huge party going on and it seemed everyone was invited! The town was celebrating yje late Frank Schlather, the unofficial mayor of Gruene and a man the whole town loved. Each year on his birthday (23rd June), the town celebrates. It just so happened that this year it was a Saturday and we were passing through! The Gruene Hall was selling beers for only 50 cents, there was live music and a general party feel across the whole town.
Aside from the party, this is a lovely town. So many quirky things to see and do plus the river, which was a short walk away from the main high street, was incredibly pretty.
The next town we visited was another German town called New Braunfels. We parked up and saw this huge metal building that looked like a corn store laying on its side. We went to investigate and it turned out to be a huge German beer hall with a lot of people watching the Germany World Cup match! We had a lovely time walking up and down the highstreet spotting German words but the sun was hot so we had to stop for an ice cream to cool us down! The place we found did some really interesting flavours, I had lemon and rosemary which was really tasty, the rosemary cut through the lemon so it wasn't too sharp. Lee had a float made with 'lime sorbet w/blueberry' on top of a grapefruit fizzy pop! Sounds weird but if you like sour tasting sweets, you'd love this mix!
New Braunfels is actually well known for the tubing you can do down the river. We walked over to the river to see what this involved and we could not believe the number of people in tubes on the river, you could barely see the water in some places! But it did look a lot of fun with little slides and currents and a number of bars along the way that people were stopping off for refreshments! Had it not been so busy, we may have given it a go but neither of us were up for sitting in a queue on the river waiting to go downstream.
We eventually picked up I-35 and headed to our hotel in San Antonio where we are due to spend the next two nights. More on that in the next blog!
Gruene looked very picturesque and the river looked lovely and empty, should have gone tubing there ;-)
ReplyDeleteMan the tubing in NB was crazy and as you say, not worth the queuing!!
Banging tune for the soundtrack too!