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| Outlet Shopping and Austin | |
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01/29/06 - San Antonio, TX (Photos - same as previous entry) Outlet treks & Tex Mex |
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Okay, with the car purchase behind us, it was time for Caroline to enjoy the Great American Shopping Experience. With the mini-van, we have virtually limitless space to fill up with all that stuff that we think we need only when we're in the U.S. Our big stop for the week was the enormous outlets about 45 minutes north of San Antonio. The most important finds included curtains and pillow covers from Caroline's new favorite home store, the giant Pottery Barn outlet.
We decided to force ourselves to do something more interesting than all of that shopping, so we drove up to Austin for a half-day on Tuesday while waiting for our new car registration to arrive at the dealership. Our visit was short, mostly a driving tour somewhat guided by a suggested itinerary from our friend and Austin expert Meredith. We took a quick hop out of the car to see the nation's largest state capitol building (this is Texas). After visiting George W's old workplace and driving the outskirts of campus, we went for some muy delicioso 'queso compuesto' at Chuy's, another Meredith recommendation. The area around Austin was beautiful, and we decided we'll need to head up again some time for longer stay, maybe look into a long weekend home exchange. The drive from San Miguel can be done in one (long 13 hour) day - just around the corner... for us. |
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| Good-Bye Sweet Chevy-Girl, Good-Bye | |
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01/29/06 - San Antonio, TX (Photos - same as next entry) Time to trade in the old gal for some larger, more reliable wheels - a 2005 metallic gold Dodge Grand Caravan! |
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As our faithful readers may recall, our formerly steadfast 1996 Chevy Cavalier (aka Chevy-Girl or Chevy Rojo) started giving us problems (overheating issues) since our trip to Michigan this past July. She has been to numerous repair shops and dealerships for repairs over the past 6 months. Her last visit to the Chevy dealership in San Miguel may have done the trick, but after the scares she's given us, we vowed to trade her in before it was too late. With all the driving we do, sometimes in remote areas, we just weren't feeling safe anymore. She's been a trusty and reliable beast of burden for us, able to haul us as well as an amazing amount of crap all over the continent (and oh, the gas mileage!) and we've been through a lot together over the past 9-1/2 years, but it was time to say goodbye. And besides, we'd been toying with the idea of getting a mini-van since the beginning of this adventure in order to make it easier to lug all of our stuff around and to be able to buy and carry with us the larger items that are involved in furnishing and remodeling 2 homes.
Well, as all the gringos down here will tell you, cars are very expensive here in Mexico and the quality is not as good as up north so as soon as we returned from PV (we spent one night at home in SMA and repacked some clean clothes), we hit the road for San Antonio, TX! Scott had done quite a bit of mini-van research and late in the game we decided to blow our budget and go for a 2005 Chrysler Town and Country or Dodge Grand Caravan, as these are the only two vehicles with the new "Stow 'n' Go" seats that fold into the floor completely, giving you, in essence, a convertible cargo van. Since we plan to lug around quite a bit of stuff (including our eventual move back to the U.S. when our money runs out and we need to find jobs again) we figured we'd need the seats out of the mini-van much of the time. We have a tiny apartment and absolutely no storage space, so we'd have nowhere to put the seats, so although we were initially looking for something a little older (and about $8,000 cheaper!), 2005 was the first model year for the Stow'n' Gos and we just had to have it!
After 2 intense and exhausting days of visiting car lots all over San Antonio (San Antonio is a HUGE city and is very spread out, similar to Detroit), talking to sleazy used car salesmen and having the van of our dreams sold out from under us (we called to say we wanted it 2 hours after looking at it and the dealership was drawing up the paperwork on that same van for another couple when we called!), we settled on a van with more features than we wanted to pay for (including Sirius satellite radio!), but we got a decent price (end of the month and all) and we love our new (as yet un-named) mini-van!
It was really sad to drive away on that rainy Texas morning, leaving Chevy-Girl in the lot behind us. We just hope that she goes to a good Mexican-American family, who she'll feel comfortable with, since she speaks Spanish now and identifies with the Mexican culture, of course. |
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