a weekend in Galveston, Texas
This past weekend we headed just a little South for a quick trip to Galveston, TX. I totally looked at the calendar wrong and booked this for the very first weekend we were back in TX after our week trip home to Ohio! Even though it would've been nice to have a little break in between trips, it was a really fun weekend and I'm so glad we finally got the chance to see the island of Galveston!
Joel ended up working later than we originally thought he'd be, so we got to the island after dark on Friday. We checked into our AirBnB "bungalow" and ordered a late night snack from Dominos down the road (you don't know how much you love the accessibility of having pizza right near you until you live out in the middle of nowhere for a while (; ) The bungalow was super little, but since we live little anyways, we totally didn't mind (: The only "odd" thing I'd have to say about this AirBnB is that the bathroom is in the main house. (the bungalow is located in the backyard) The listing said it was private but I had someone walk in the second door as I was walking in to brush my teeth Saturday night... luckily that was the only awkward bathroom encounter... but still, a little odd and maybe not ideal for some people. For the price and location, we were willing to afford a little oddness.
We woke up Saturday and hit the beach! Well, we didn't get to the beach right away. After trying and failing to get coffee at several different places, me trying to navigate and work on the phone at the same time, and us getting a little hangry, we finally ended up at Galveston Island State Park with the dogs. We walked down the beach for a while, and let the boys play in the water. They had a great time until Mushu got a little overheated, so we headed back to the bungalow for a little break.
Joel and I then walked the 1/2 mile to the beach for a bit and sat near the Historic Pleasure Pier with the mass of other people on the beach that super, ridiculously hot Saturday (the CRV said it was 101 out at one point!) It was fun being on the beach, with our toes in the sand. There's just something soothing and nice about the water, even when you have to share the view with tons of other people.
We headed downtown for dinner and to walk around a little. We ate at a place called "Shrimp n Stuff Downtown" and LOVED the stuffed jalapeños (stuffed with crab) We walked around, stopped into some cute shops, checked out some docks where we saw dolphins! TONS of dolphins! It was neat to see the different boats and oil rigs, but especially fun to see the dolphins. We also saw a lot of beautiful wall murals all over Galveston which was neat! The downtown area is just FILLED with art (on the walls and in the shops!) small shops, souvenirs, live music, restaurants and bars, and we saw a lot of people walking around with alcohol? Don't know if that's a legal thing down there or if everyone just didn't care haha. But it was definitely the place to be on a Saturday night.
When the sun starting setting, we walked back down to the beach with the dogs. They really love the water and being on the beach! This was a little better for them because even though it was still hot, the sun wasn't beating down on us so fiercely! Joel and I then walked to the beach AGAIN after taking the dogs back to the bungalow. We thought we'd walk down the pier, until we realized you had to pay to just walk down it (and the line was stupid long) and THEN had to pay more if you decided to ride any rides. So we opted not to, and headed to Hey Mikey's for some delicious ice-cream instead! (seeing the pier all lit up at night was really cool though!) We loved this ice cream place, after sampling a few different flavors, Joel decided on strawberry and I went with one scoop of cookie dough (my all time favorite ice cream) and one scoop of coffee (oh my so good!) and of course a cup of vanilla for the boys. Highly recommend this ice cream shop!
Sorry for the crappy night-time pic! If anyone has any tips on taking night-time pics on an iPhone, send them my way! (:
Sunday morning we headed to the local farmer's market (also about 1/2 mile from our bungalow, at the Bryan Museum!) after getting coffee at Mod Coffeehouse.
We really enjoyed the farmers market! The farmer's market is on Thursdays and Sundays, the times changes seasonally. There were a decent amount of booths set up with a big variety of different wares. We picked up some local breakfast sausage, local season salt, and homemade cinnamon roll and buttermilk zucchini bread (YUM!) We started the KETO-diet this Monday, so the zucchini bread and cinnamon roll were gone promptly on Sunday (:
And after one last stop at the Donut Palace on our way out of town, we were headed home! We may have been a little carb-crazed in preparation for starting KETO haha! (Joel loved the cranberry muffin and breakfast burritos from Donut Palace!) It was a quick, but fun trip for us all, but we were glad to get home. We spent the rest of our Sunday grocery shopping and food prepping for the start of our KETO diet. Pray that we don't go into carb-withdrawal too terribly this week! (mostly pray for me, I <3 carbs * pretend there is a crying emoji here*)
