TRAVEL: 1 week in Texas (Y’ALL)

Justin and I went to Texas in early January to write our USMLE Step 2 Clinical Skills exams. We stayed for a whole week and made a fun vacation out of it…

Day 1: Houston we have landed! We picked up our rental car at the airport and drove to our first order to business WHATABURGER, a Texan fast food staple. We were NOT disappointed. They don’t have a veggie burger but they will sub hashbrowns for the meat patty in any of their burgers (and charge you only the junior price) so I had a delicious carb overload. Also, their spicy ketchup is delicious!

While waiting for our AirBnB check-in time, we went to the cutest coffee shop called Slow Poke. It was decked out with turtle, snail, and sloth decor – how adorable!! (Coffee was good too)

Once checked into the AirBnB, we spent the rest of the day settling in, getting groceries, and studying for the exam (boo).

Day 2: Space Center Day! The Space Center was a 40 minute drive away from where we were staying so of course along the way we stopped at Whataburger for breakfast (spoiler alert, we went to Whataburger alot). We tried the famous honey butter chicken biscuit! I thought the sandwich sans fried chicken was delicious so I can only imagine how delicious it would be with the crispy savoury fried chicken.

We got to the Johnson Space Center just after opening and took the Tram Tour first. It was really cool to see how big the campus is and how many different people and parts are involved in NASA. We got to visit the Mission Control Center and Rocket Park. I think the Tram Tour was the best part of the Space Center.

The rest of the Space Center was interesting to see although quite catered to educating/entertaining a younger population.

We squeezed in some more studying before dinner then rewarded ourselves with Crawfish & Noodles! This was the meal I was most excited for and it held up to its expectations. We got a giant bowl of fresh crawfish in cajun butter, salt & pepper fried blue crab, and thai fried rice. Everything tasted amazing and it was so fun to eat with your hands! I spent the rest of the trip wishing we could eat here again. 11/10 best meal we had (in my opinion), and tbh I’m still craving it.

Finally we ended the day with more studying before our exam day.

Day 3: We spent the entire morning and afternoon writing the exam –  nothing exciting there… I thought the exam centre was very well organized and it went by quicker than I thought. We were done before 4pm. We made a quick dinner at our AirBnB, then went to a Rockets game (vs. Nuggets)! It was lucky that there was a game the only night we were free. We got to watch James Harden live in action and finally see the home team win for once! Haha kidding kidding, we love the Raptors.

Day 4: Bye bye Houston, off to San Antonio. Of course, we stopped by Whataburger again for breakfast hehe. Honey butter chicken biscuit and cheddar jalapeno egg biscuit.

We got to San Antonio in 3 hours. We went to the Alamo historic site first and learned more about Texan history.

We walked around downtown (which gave us strong Clifton Hill vibes with Ripley’s and wax museums) and along the Riverwalk where we had lunch. I loved the Riverwalk, and all the restaurants and stores along it!

We settled in and relaxed in our cute AirBnB then headed out to Bliss for dinner. We had oysters, grilled octopus, and a whole grilled fish – yum!

After dinner we went back to the Riverwalk downtown to walk it at night and enjoy some ice cream for dessert 🙂

Day 5: We had breakfast and coffee in San Antonio before driving off to our last stop of the trip: Austin!

Along the way to Austin, we stopped by a small town called Gruene which was recommended to me by the customs officer at the airport back in Toronto haha. He was right – it was super cute with lots of antique shops.

Once we got to Austin we went to Terry Black’s BBQ so Justin could try their beef rib. Look at how gigantic it is! The BBQ was pretty good and the line was not long at all. For me, the mac and cheese was probably the best I ever had – so cheesy and creamy!

We went to see the graffiti at Castle Hill because I had heard such good things about it but unfortunately it was all fenced up. The city is planning on demolishing it soon which is such a shame because there is so much creative expression there.

After checking-in to our AirBnB, we went to “hike” up Mount Bonnell. I say “hike” because when I was reading about it online it was described as a 30min hike but in reality it was a 2 minute stair walk lol. It was a great view and we stayed for the sunset!

For dinner we tried out Uchiko, which is a high-end creative Japanese restaurant. The meal was on the pricey side but we like to explore creative cuisine while travelling. Our favourite dish of the night is one pictured last. It’s a bowl of king crab and uni topped with savoury, creamy celery root foam.

Day 6: Ok so we did it. We jumped on the Franklin BBQ bandwagon. We debated whether we should try it or not but in the end we ended up waiting in line for 3 hours to try “the best BBQ in Texas” (maybe the world?? haha idk). Franklin BBQ opens at 11am and usually sells out around 2-3pm! We arrived at 8am and there were already 7 people in line ahead of us. Franklin BBQ provides lawn chairs for the first 20 or so people so we sat in line and watched Antman and the Wasp lol. Overall, waiting in line was an enjoyable experience and passed by pretty quickly. By the time the restaurant opened, there was probably 50 people in line behind us! We ended up ordering a bit of everything they had: beef brisket, pork ribs, pulled pork, turkey breast and sausage, as well as coleslaw, potato salad, baked beans, and pecan tart. Justin said the meat was definitely worth the wait and oh my goodness the pecan tart… I should’ve bought ten.

We checked out the Austin Public Library then went to Zilker Park. We walked along the river and tried electric scooters. We kept seeing these everywhere around the city and wanted to try them for ourselves. They were super fun and went pretty fast too!

Lastly, we explored the shops along South Congress Ave (SoCo) before having a homemade dinner and early night.

Day 7: Our last full day in Texas! Today we decided to go on a Taco Tour. We found a bunch of popular taco trucks/restaurants and tried a total of 9 places throughout the day. It was a fun way to explore the city and almost all the tacos were delicious. I say almost all because the very last place we went had some bad meat tacos which gave Justin food poisoning and I will spare the rest of the details. It tainted the day but I was untouched (yay for being vegetarian) and will still share the details of our Taco Tour in another blog post (but here are a few pics in the meantime)!

In between eating tacos, we spent the day mural hunting and exploring University of Texas campus! Check out Justin ready to learn haha.

Day 8: Time to head back home after a great week vacation exploring Texas!

Thanks for reading!

Lizzy