Last Weekend

As usual we're a little behind, but last weekend was Memorial Day so we had 3 days to relax and see some new sights!

Friday night started with dinner at Austin's American Grill downtown. They had a full week of special events to kick off the summer, and our night featured live music and blended drink specials. (Mmm pina colada!) Simon had Fat Tire, the famous beer of the local New Belgium Brewing Company.

The beer is so-called in honor of the founder's bicycle trip across Europe, where he became entranced by Belgium beer in the first place while at a bar in Brugge, Belgium. To this day, the company gives employees one of their signature "cruiser" bikes after one year of work, and a trip to Belgium after five!

An interesting point is that Fat Tire is actually served in a Belgian-style beer glass, which I recognized from my trip to Belgium last summer with my family! I was excited to make that connection. Here's a picture of Simon with his beer and one of me from last summer, straight from Belgium, for comparison:

Even though I've used this to educate you on one of the (many) local breweries, we did eat as well -- I had the house specialty Smoked Pork Tenderloin which had an amazing sweet soy/brown sugar sauce and was WELL worth the money, and Simon had a combo chicken/ribs plate that he liked.

Coming up next is a trip to Denver on Saturday!