Planning 5 - Tour of Texas

Celebrating 45th Anniversary

Lisa and Tom flew to Dallas over Labor Day weekend.  We left right from the airport to drive down to San Antonio.  

We stopped for lunch in West, Texas

Posing with Buckee

After arriving in San Antonio and checking into our hotel, we strolled along the Riverwalk and stopped for a refreshing libation.

On the walk to Mi Tierra, we passed Bill's Bar-B-Q establishment.  Unfortunately it was closed.

Debbie and Bill had asked friends for a recommendation for dinner in San Antonio. The unanimous opinion was Mi Tierra. 

Mi Tierra has been a San Antonio staple for 75 years.  They are open 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.

 On Sunday morning, before leaving San Antonio, we walked over to visit the Alamo.

Gun demonstration

Well in the courtyard

On the way back to Dallas, we drove through the town of Gruene with the idea to stop for lunch.  It was so crowded they had a policeman directing traffic in the center of town.  We made a hasty exit. We did get to see the Greune Dance Hall.

We drove through Austin, so we could see where Debbie and Bill used to live.

 While in Austin, we stopped at The County Line Bar-B-Q on the Lake.  We had a delicious meal and enjoyed looking at the fish and turtles from the deck.

Back in Dallas we spent Labor Day "laboring" over the planning of the trip.  Due to a "glitch" Bill had to jump through hoops to rebook our flight reservations.  Since he is the transportation guru, he then reserved the car.  We finalized our exact route and started the process of digging into the sites.  The trip is really coming together and we are all very happy with the results.

Planning 4 - Memorial Day

 

Debbie and Bill came to St. Louis over Memorial Day weekend to attend a family wedding.  The wedding was on Saturday and Tom and Lisa had a barbecue on Sunday.  Monday was delegated to trip planning.  We narrowed down our list of "must sees" and began researching the sites.

Planning 3 - Let's Get Down to Business

Airline reservations were booked and confirmed, so now it's time to get down to some heavy duty planning.  Debbie is up to the task.

Maps for Tom-Tom

Research books from the library

Updated map after whittling.

Planning 2 - Major Date Change

 

 We had a great dinner at Love and War in Texas

In late March 2016, Alyce and Lisa drove down to Dallas for a spring break visit.  The idea was broached  to take the trip in spring of 2017 rather than fall of 2017.  Tom was consulted, but since he had to think about it, no decision was made.

  

After Lisa returned to St. Louis and explained to Tom why it was such a good idea to go in the spring, he saw the light and the date was changed to leave on March 1. 

On midnight on the first available date to make reservations, Debbie stayed up to work on getting the tickets.  She was able to get us tickets to Munich, but ran into trouble getting us tickets home on the date we wanted.  After trying many different dates, the dates we wanted finally popped up as available.  She grabbed them and we were booked.  Now we had to plan in a hurry.

Planning 1 - Where To Go This Time?

December 2015, Tom and Lisa flew to Dallas to celebrate New Year's Eve with Debbie and Bill and start planning the 2017 trip to Europe.  We went to the Robert Earl Keen concert in Fort Worth on December 30.

Bass Hall in Fort Worth

Robert Earl Keen stage set

 

Dinner at Razzoo's with yummy Peach Mambos

 

We had a delicious dinner at Lavendou on New Year's Eve

We spent New Year's Day planning the trip.  The first decision we made was to fly into Munich.  Our list of places to visit included Salzburg, Austria,  Regensburg, Stuttgart and Munich in Germany, Metz, Strasbourg, Freiburg, Colmar, the Alsace Route du Vin and Mulhouse in France, Basel, Bern, Lucerne, Zurich, St. Gallen, Interlaken and Konstanz in Switzerland and Vaduz, Liechtenstein.  This was a good start, but we knew we would have  to whittle this list down to a manageable size.

Time to start whittling.