Every year when my husbands birthday comes around I start to brainstorm ideas for his birthday present. I try to think back to anything he said he wanted or wanted to do. Which is rare most of the time because just like me, if there’s something we really want to do or want, we work towards getting/doing it right away.

He’s a football fan and his favourite team, you guessed it… are the Dallas cowboys. He hadn’t been to a cowboys game in Dallas before so this was it! The big surprise! After speaking to people after the trip, I realized how lucky I was to find flight tickets after first purchasing the game tickets. I really wanted us to fly into the Dallas airport but Austin worked out as well. Upon arriving to the Austin airport we picked up our car rental from Hertz that we booked prior to arriving in Austin via Hotwire. If we were coming to Texas, we were going to see as much of Texas as possible! Road Trriiiippp!

For the first night we stayed at SpringHill Suites by Marriott in Austin. The staff here were incredible and accommodated us even though we came in really late. We’re big time late night snackers so it was even better that they had a little convenience store open. Not that many options, but better than nothing!

TIP: We parked outside the hotel under a tree, it was late at night so we didn’t think much of it.. but HUGE mistake. I wish I took a picture but come morning when we went to our car. It was full of bird poop. EVERYWHERE. Almost as if a thousand birds decided to sit on that tree overnight or early in the morning and all had explosive diarrhea all over the car. Had to open the car with kleenex and of course had to go for a car wash. Lesson here is, don’t park your car under a tree anywhere. You just never know.

Best place to have breakfast in Austin is hands down The Omelettry. So many options and the service gets 5 stars. Drool over this:

We drove to San Antonio to check out the Riverwalk. If you get the chance to experience San Antonio then this is the place to be! I recommend going close to sunset so you can see everything in the day and then see the magic enfold at night. So many people, restaurants and the boat tour is a must do! We had dinner at the hard rock cafe. Which we were both not so thrilled about. It was.. ok. Food was cold and service was really slow. It made it worse that it wasn’t busy either and that was the sole reason we chose hard rock over all of the other restaurants.

Tip: If you have more than 5 days in Texas, definitely do a road trip to the big bend.

When in Texas you MUST have good BBQ.

So where can one find the best BBQ in Texas? Salt Lick my friend. I can confidently say this was the best BBQ I have ever had in my life. We went for lunch and sat at a picnic bench inside and got the most amazing service and food. If I ever go back to Texas, I’ll have Salt Lick for lunch and dinner every night I’m there.
Please come to Toronto.

Our next stop was Dallas and we checked out the famous ranch where Dallas episodes were filmed called the South Fork Ranch. One of my husbands favourite shows growing up.

The Dallas skyline

In Dallas we stayed at the Omni Dalls Park West Hotel. The lobby is grand, the staff are friendly and our room was perfect! This was a great place to stay since nearby we had the football game to attend the next day.

To end our trip off, the big surprise! Awesome seats to the opening game for the Dallas Cowboys!

We thought we were early enough. Since we arrived three hours before the game started. Yet we found parking close to the end of the lot. Which was a 20 minute walk under the hot sun, no shade to the stadium. We were sweating buckets by the time we got there.