Starling Travel

This is the second time we’ve stayed at the Radisson Town Lake. We love it because it overlooks the river and Congress Bridge. Congress Bridge is where the largest urban bat colony in North America live. In the summer, huge clouds of bats leave the bridge every evening at dusk.

This year, however, the bridge is quiet and abandoned.

It’s too cold this year to support the bats, so I suspect they are vacationing a little longer in Mexico. We came to Austin for the SXSW Interactive Festival, so the bats were a secondary attraction.

The hotel swag, however, was quite enjoyable.

The toilet paper origami left a little to be desired.

The towel origami, however, was beautiful.

I don’t care for Sleep Number beds. They are beds that are filled with air depending on what firmness you want. It took a lot of tweaking to get my side of the bed to feel like a “normal” bed. I guess my sleep number is 45, but I didn’t enjoy finding that out. The Radisson brags about their Sleep Number beds, but I don’t find them pleasant or appealing. It’s more like sleeping on a camping mattress.

You can see all the photos for the Radisson Town Lake here:

• Radisson Town Lake Hotel Swag – a set on Flickr

On the whole, our stay at the Radisson has been enjoyable. They charge ten bucks a day per computer to be online in your hotel room, which I find appalling. I guess I’m used to cheaper hotels that try to attract me with free wireless. I like that I can just walk to the convention center from this hotel. I LOVE the view of the bridge, even though this year it’s bat-free. I even love the TGI Friday’s in the hotel lobby. Sometimes I’m so tired that I just need a quiet meal that is familiar. Someday, Internet connectivity will be free at all hotels just like water and televisions. Until then, it’s hit and miss.

Megan Wallent visited Paris, France last month and shared her experience with us all:

• Paris – Getting Here « M( )

• A Day in Paris, but no Good Food? (Almost!) « M( )

• Paris Day 2 or “Look, That Kid Has No Head!” « M( )

• Paris Travel Summary (Details to Follow!) « M( )

My favorite entry, A Day in Paris, but no Good Food? (Almost!) talked about how exhausting traveling and getting fed can be:

At this point, Anh and I, in our tiredness, broke one of our rules – always eat good food. We settled for a crappy café, and while edible, was not great. Oh well.

I don’t have a rule like that: “Always eat good food.” Most of the time, I am so absorbed in what I am experiencing when I’m traveling that I delay eating until I’m starving. Then I will eat anything that is nearby. Sometimes, we end up finding wonderfully delicious food from a street vendor, other times… well, you know.

I know the food of a place is just as important as the architecture, museums or amusements, but sometimes I let it fall by the wayside.

Looks like Megan and Anh had a wonderful visit to France and I wish them much happiness.

Mike and I go to Austin, Texas every year for the SXSW Interative Festival. It’s nice to see that the New York Times have noticed how entertaining the city is:

• Austin, Texas – New York Times

Since Austin is so close to San Antonio, a visit to those two cities is a great trip. Here are all the entries in which we’ve talked about Austin, Texas:

• Starling Travel – Austin, Texas

You can see my links to San Antonio here:

• Starling Travel – San Antonio, Texas

These are from the pile of hotel SWAG that I have collected over the last couple of years. I photographed them at home, not at the hotel.

We got these at the Town Lake Raddison Hotel in Austin, Texas while we were at SXSW in March 2007. They are labeled with the brand ASiRA, and if you like them, you can buy more from their website here: ASiRA Body Care

Our last stay at Ramada Inn was not pleasant, so I have no good feelings about the SWAG. Isn’t that strange?

The only piece of SWAG remaining from The Casablanca Hotel and Casino in Mesquite, Nevada.

I know there was more, but this was all I could find from The Sahara Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I don’t remember ever staying at a Howard Johnson. COOL SWAG, though.

This guy is OLD. I have no recollection of staying at Fairfield Inn, so it must be at least two years old.

I like the design of the Hilton SWAG, but it’s hard to get the stuff out of those bottles. Pretty, but not very useful. These are from the Las Vegas Hilton in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This soap is from the Excalibur Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. I know they gave us more SWAG than just the soap, but all that was left was this.

I enjoyed going through the pile of SWAG. There is a certain joy in bottles and bars of soap that are the wrong size. When I was a child, I used to think that the small soaps and shampoos that my grandpa brought home from his business trips were for me because they were small. While I was looking through the pile, I found some of the items that I had photographed in the hotel. Tune in on Monday for Hotel SWAG for those photographs!

After a heated discussion on whether we should cancel the Reader Meetup, we let the fortune cookie decide our fate. It said, “A man who dares to waste an hour of time hasn’t discovered the value of life.”

It’s not like we don’t want to spend an hour with our readers; we really do. Unfortunately, the few people who contacted us in Austin have either not responded to our email announcing the event or cancelled. No one has RSVP’d on the UpComing.org site, so the underwhelming response says: CANCEL.

If you live in Austin and were considering going to the Reader Meetup, contact me. Mike and I are are going to this event, which is open to the public, so you’re free to show up here as well.

Your Video Blog Can Save the World

Friday, March 9th, 2005 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Carver Museum Cultural Center (1161 Angelna Street). Google Map FREE admission, no badge or pre-event signup needed to attend this session.

Michael and I are going to be in Austin, Texas for SXSW. While we’re there, we wanted to allow our readers to have a chance to meet us, so we set up a reader meetup at the Sunset Valley Barnes and Noble:

Location: Barnes & Noble – Sunset Valley
5601 Brodie Lane Suite 300, Austin, TX 78745 Google Map
Phone: 512-892-3493

Date and Time: March 9, 2006 6pm-7pm

Please RSVP using Upcoming.org so that we don’t feel like we’re going to be waiting at the bookstore all alone:

• Upcoming.org: Starling Studios Reader Meetup at Barnes and Noble Sunset Valley (Friday, March 9, 2007)

We are going to hang around for an hour, gathering readers and then we are going to let you pick a restaurant where we can eat and hang out for longer if you want. We are really interested in what we can do to make Starling Travel a better place to be. What are you interested in? What bores you? How can we help you? Come with ideas and helpful hints because we’re all ears!

We are going to be in Austin, Texas from March 8-13th this year and we want to meet up with the readers of Starling Travel. We want to hear your ideas about the site, what you like, what you hate and how we can be better.

Here’s the problem: We don’t really know the town. We’re hoping that you folks can tell us the best place and day to meet.

Please email us if you would like to come to the meetup here:

• Starling Travel Meetup: Contact Laura Moncur

We are excited to meet our readers face to face and hear just what you want from us!

We went to San Antonio for a World War II Reunion of the 303rd Bomb Group. The highlight of the evening for the final banquet was an Andrew Sisters Revue performed by Destination. I went to the banquet expecting a typical faire of WWII era music sung poorly by a local band. They were a local band from Wimberley, Texas, but they sang beautifully. See for yourself here:

Destination performs regularly with a full orchestra in Wimberley, but they are also available if you have an event in Austin, San Marcos, Mustang Island or San Antonio. They’ll do right by you. Can’t say they’ll do the same for their “fellas” overseas…

Where: Destination:

MySpace Page – Destination Trio

She also performs with Gypsy Moon:

MySpace Page – Gypsy Moon Music

For Booking Information: Phone: 512-396-7171

Scattered across San Antonio, are the humble Bill Miller BBQ restaurants. They are a casual oasis of BBQ that beckons to me at every few street corners. We finally stopped at Bill Miller to see if it was all that Texas BBQ was supposed to be.

I was told long ago that the hallmark of good Texas BBQ is that they cook the meat without sauce and let you add the sauce to your liking. That’s exactly how they did it at Bill Miller. I had a piece of brisket and some chicken. Both were tender and moist before we used any of the sauce on it.

For me, though, it’s all about the sides. I can’t eat too much meat, but I can enjoy good bread, potato salad and coleslaw all day long. Fortunately, Bill Miller BBQ had enough of those as well.

Bill Miller has a bakery where fresh pies are baked every day and brought to the stores. We had a choice of at least three different pies. When there is that much variety, it’s hard to choose just one. We had two and stole bites from one another’s.

After I had loaded up on food, the service was efficient and friendly. They served us up what we wanted and checked us out quickly so we could eat it. I really liked that I could just go through the line, get my food quickly and immediately go to my table to eat. It smelled so good, I don’t think I could have waited for traditional sit-down service. Luckily, they served cafeteria-style, so I didn’t have to wait any longer than it took me to get through the line.

In fact, I couldn’t wait. I forgot to take a picture of my food until it was all gone.

Want to know the best part? It was cheap. For both Mike and I to eat, it was around ten bucks. We had more food than the two of us could eat plus dessert and we only spent around ten dollars. They have locations in San Antonio, Austin and Corpus Christi. If you find yourself in Texas, make sure you try out Bill Miller’s BBQ. You won’t be disappointed and you’ll be surprised how much food you get for your buck.

Where: Bill Miller BBQ
P.O. Box 839925
San Antonio, Texas 78283-3925
Phone: (210) 225-4461
Fax: (210) 302-1533
E-mail: hq@billmillerbbq.com

Restaurants all over San Antonio, Austin and Corpus Christi:

San Antonio: Google Map

Austin: Google Map

Corpus Christi: Google Map

We’re going to be busy with other commitments for the next two weeks, so we probably won’t be posting here. While we are gone, please enjoy these entries from our past:

• Starling Travel » Take a Quick Vacation Right Now

• Starling Travel » Inner Child Vacations

• Starling Travel » Park City: Washington School Inn

• Starling Travel » Eats, Nevada – September 2005

• Starling Travel » Austin, Texas: The Congress Bridge Bats

Read one of these every other day and that should last you until we return.

See you in May!