I’m officially declaring 2014 my year of travel.

Typically, I go on one vacation every year, and I realize that makes me pretty lucky. I’ve been to some pretty cool places with my family but this year is epic as far as travel goes. At least for me. I’ve already been to Colorado and now I’m writing from Austin, Texas. On top of that, I’ll be going to Paris and London next month. But enough about that and more about Texas:

My best friend moved to Austin not long after we graduated from high school. I’ve always had this stigmatic opinion about Texas and it’s taken her four years to convince me to visit her here. About a week ago, we were Skyping and decided to plan for me to road trip here with her younger sister. So early Friday morning (4am early) we left Chicago and drove 17 and a half hours to Austin.

Texas is not as bad as I thought it would be. It’s actually pretty BA. Granted, I’m surrounded by hipsters in Austin, so I feel right at home. We spent Saturday sitting by the pool, which was excellent because the weather in Chicago has been crazy lately. It’s actually nice to be somewhere hot, even though I prefer a more temperate climate. Yesterday, we went shopping and did some tourist-y things, saw a little bit of the famous University of Texas, Austin campus, and drove around.

Texas is a lot more picturesque than I thought. I assumed it would be desert and tumbleweeds…but it’s so much more lush. I’ve been having way too much fun taking pictures of the cacti and other plants that don’t grow up north. It’ll be a nice thing to look back on next winter when I’m freezing again.

Anyway, so far, so good. I’m excited to see how the rest of the week goes.