Old Gramps Came Back ‘Cause I Couldn’t Stay Away

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 23384 – 1191

First, let me wish any celebrants who may follow this blog, have a Happy Valentine’s Day! To those who don’t celebrate it, have a happy. I notice that it is also the beginning of Lent, a season of fasting celebrated mostly by Catholics where they give something up. I hope you didn’t give up chocolate, lol. I will stock up on chocolate on the 15th when all the candy is half-price. Anyway

Here’s The Haps:

Thank you all for your kind wishes for our vacation, we had a good time. TNT went on the cruise I had mentioned last April in the A-Z challenge and enjoyed herself at the same time as we were gone. Hey-Boy didn’t have to be boarded because Other Daughter and kids were here so he wasn’t as sad as he normally would be but he is TNT’s dog above all else and gets mopey when she’s away.

Anyway, while TNT was swimming with dolphins and sharing a trail with a six-foot lizard, we were having our own adventure. I was finally able to take Mrs. Herb to Paris and see the Eiffel Tower.

Yes, it was beautiful. I thought the top was particularly stunning. Perhaps Jaunty is a better word. I mean, not everyone can pull off wearing a red cowboy hat but on the Eiffel Tower, it looked great.

Yes, we visited the second largest Paris in the world, Paris, Texas.

For our vacation, we went on a driving tour of the great state of Texas. My wife had a conference to attend in the Houston area toward the end of the week and instead of flying, we decided to rent a car instead and see some of this giant state. We came through Amarillo and purposely detoured to Paris, just because I wanted to say I took my wife to Paris. There wasn’t a whole lot for us to do there besides the Eiffel Tower but there was a Mom & Pop Italian restaurant that we enjoyed and would consider making a detour just to see again. Capizzi’s. They don’t have a regular website but their page on Tripadvisor has a link to their Facebook page. Since we don’t do FB I don’t know how well the link works. Anyway, it might be worth driving 12 hours to visit again.

I don’t do the marathon drives that I used to, though. I am finding as I get older that 4 to 6 hours is about what I can handle comfortably. I still could, but I don’t want to. The Lord has blessed our family and we don’t have to drive like crazy, stop at a wayside, lock the doors, snooze a few hours, eat a couple of stale sandwiches, and move on. We have and in a pinch, we would again, but it’s not as easy in our sixties as it was in our thirties, lol.

I’ll post more about the trip in the next couple of days. The one regret I have is that I didn’t get to stop in Granbury, TX, and have lunch with world-famous, often-truthful, occasional tall-tale teller, blogger, and all-around good guy, Phil Strawn at Notes From the Cactus Patch and his wife. Granbury is full of Texas history and I think we will try to make it a destination next time. I mean, for us, anyway, once you’ve seen Paris, you’ve seen Paris. Anyway, He’s a blogger I’d enjoy having lunch with just to listen to some of his stories. Some of them are even true. When I was looking at the Granbury website I did see that the total eclipse will be visible from there for 2 minutes and 38 seconds on Monday, April 8th, 2024. Hmmm… Stay tuned to this station for further announcements. Being semi-retired does have its advantages.

This was actually our second stop but it felt like a more dramatic way to start. Woo-hoo, Herb. Shades of excitement. More about our trip in the next post.