Texas Hill Country Day 1 and 2

For Christmas (of 2012), Michel and I decided not to exchange Christmas presents and instead put that money towards a vacation. We had talked about doing another cruise since we loved our first one so much! However, right after we started looking into cruises we found out that we were pregnant. My OB said that I could travel out of the country up until 27 weeks, and we left for our vacation when I was 26 weeks pregnant. We thought that would be too risky, so we decided to make it more of a local vacation. We looked and researched. I told Michel what I really wanted in a vacation was somewhere with a great pool, a spa for pampering, and some fun activities nearby. We decided to stay at the Horseshoe Bay Resort down in the Hill country of Texas. So yesterday, Sunday, we drove 4 hours to the Hill Country of Texas!

It's hard to explain the ambiance here. We are staying in just your basic hotel room, but I told Michel I feel like we have that cruise-like feeling here. The employees are more than willing to go that extra mile to be of service to you, they're extremely courteous and friendly, and they just look happy and welcoming all the time. I think that's why I feel like we're getting the cruise-like feeling. Also, our hotel really is a resort in the fact that it has several restaurants within the hotel, a bar at the pool to get drinks and bar food, and on-site it has a spa and fitness center, golfing, a marina, etc. The landscape is absolutely gorgeous, too. We're surrounded by some palm trees, a lake, the hills...I truly don't feel like I'm in Texas! It's been a great getaway!

Our view from our hotel room

It's just gorgeous out here!

Anyways, on Sunday when we arrived all we did was hang out in the pool for a short time, and then we decided to order room service because the restaurants were more food and more expensive than what we wanted, and we didn't feel like driving to go anywhere.

On Monday, we decided to travel about 20 minutes away to an "animal safari". It was a little campground/petting zoo/safari tour where you could take a bus on a guided tour and feed the animals. It was so cool! Each time we drove into an area with new animals they all saw the bus coming and immediately started coming over to us. They knew what goodies we had on that bus! We were able to hand feed all of the animals except for zebras - apparently they might bite. We could still touch them, but they take food with their teeth while the rest of the animals took food out of our hands with their tongues.

Little baby emus!

When we finished our animal safari, it was afternoon and we were ready for some lunch! Michel's former captain knew where we were going and told Michel about this restaurant called the Bluebonnet Cafe. They were supposed to have really good chicken fried steak and pie. We took his advice and both ordered chicken fried steak, and he was right - it was delicious!! We were pretty full, so we ordered some pie to go. Michel ordered apple pie and I ordered chocolate cream pie. I'm not typically a pie person - I don't normally like meringue or whipped cream, but this pie was different. It was SOOOO GOOD!!! Look how big it was!

I ate every last morsel of that pie! On top of that, we decided we're going back to get another slice of pie before we have to leave - yeah, it was that good! We spent the rest of Monday cooling off from our day of fun in the pool and then stayed in the room for the night watching a movie and just relaxing. We have had a great first couple of days on our vacation!!!