Wes & Erica's vacation photo album // Shawnee, OK// August 2026

The day before we leave town for an actual vacation is a good time to finally post about our last (mini) trip. 🚗 We took the dogs in for their grooming appointment in August. It takes a couple of hours, so we decided to head out to Shawnee to visit the mummies while we wait. We've been watching The Lost Treasures of Egypt docuseries on National Geographic (currently on the final season😞) and I've been really wanting to see some artifacts in real life. Lacey reminded me of the Mabee-Greer Museum of Art; we supposedly went in high school, but I do not remember anything about it. A quick google search confirmed that the mummies were still there and open to the public. Hooray!!

We stopped by the 👢Kicks 66👢statue on our way out of town. It's cool but probably looks better at night when it's lit up. Part of me wants to drive around to visit all the Route 66 statues they're putting up all over the state, but another part of me is okay with just seeing pictures of them on Instagram. LOL 

When I was planning our day out, I picked two activities for us - the art museum and the Monks' Market at St. Gregory's Abbey. I didn't realize they're on the same campus! We started with the abbey. It was still pretty early, but with it being the hottest summer on record, it was already 100℉ by the time we got there.🔥 🌞I wanted to walk around and look at all the old architecture, but it got unbearably hot within the hour. 😫 We still managed to walk around a bit before heading inside. The Monks' Market was a lot smaller than the website made it out to be, but it still had some neat stuff. There was an arts & crafts section with crocheted items, the thought of a group of monks having a crochet night made me laugh a bit. I bought some lotion and k-cups. ☕The coffee selection was the largest part of the market, and I plan to return in the winter or spring to buy some more (it'll be nice to walk around campus when Oklahoma isn't under an Extreme Heat Warning).

The tools & devices used to make the host were my favorite part of the abbey's history lesson. 

There was one other visitor at the abbey with us. He suggested that we walk along the hallways to see the old photographs and history. We learned about Fr. Greer and his role at the abbey & museum. I also took the self-guided tour of the church. ⛪The church was small, but jam packed with art and relics. Each chapel was like a mini-museum dedicated to a saint or monk. One of the chapels had the ropes to ring the big church bells. The three white ropes were used to signal daily mass and other normal events. The red rope was reserved funerary purposes and for when a monk passed. 🕭 The stained-glass windows were part of the self-guided tour but it was a little overcast the day we went, so it wasn't as bright or colorful as it normally would be. Still very beautiful though! 🕈 One of the monks was playing the organ while I walked around the church, which was very neat to have live background music. 

The last thing I did at the abbey was walk the labyrinth. (Wes gave up and headed to the museum lobby to wait for me... it was probably 105℉ by this point 😡) On the way into the center of the labyrinth, I was meant to meditate on things I need to let go of, then when I got to the center, I was supposed to reflect on how much more calm & peaceful I felt. I did both of those things, but I was completely drenched in sweat, so I cut through the path to walk out. I don't remember what I was supposed to meditate on as I exited to return to the hustle & bustle of real life. St. Gregory's Abbey is an interesting (and free!) way to spend an afternoon. I definitely recommend going, but not in the summertime because none of it is properly air conditioned. 

The vase on the top left was used to store preserved salted eggs, which is one of my top favorite Chinese foods, and made me very hungry because we were nearing lunchtime. 🥚

The little statue on the bottom left represents my daily anxiously discombobulated state. 😫 But the ivory girl in the center is the cool collectiveness I strive for.

And the shrunken heads were just too weird to not take a picture of. When the travel brochures say this museum has variety, they mean it!!

Now onto the art museum! 🎨The museum is small but has a ton of neat stuff... all types/genres of art from all over the world. I liked that it was condensed. I felt like I could spend more time with each piece and it was nice to not have to walk around so much after touring the monastery. Fr. Greer studied art in France and travelled a lot. 🌍 He knew that his fellow monks and community in Oklahoma wouldn't get the same opportunities as he did, especially in the 1800s, so he collected artifacts from his travels and brought them back to start the museum. The best part was that the museum actually felt like a random grouping of souvenirs brought back from a lifetime of travels. I could imagine Fr. Greer being like, oh this painting has significance and would also look great next to this vase!

The first artifact he acquired was from Egypt. 𓁁 The museum has three sarcophagi with two intact mummies. They were the coolest things I've seen in a while. 😮 I am obviously no archeologist or Egyptologist, but felt like I could be in the moment. I remembered all the random nuggets of information I learned from the National Geographic docuseries and related them back to the items in front of me. 𓀴 I could feel how astonished the archeologists felt when they discovered the tombs and how careful they had to be to lift the mummies out, like I was part of the team in episode 5... maybe I let my imagination wander off too far. LOL We were the only ones at the museum, so I got to linger at the mummy exhibit for as long as I wanted. Super cool! 

My favorite of the three.

After I had my fill of wonder and awe at the museum, it was time for lunch. We went downtown and ate at The Owl Shoppe. 🦉 It had just opened for lunch and the restaurant was already packed! I thought this would be a sign we'd have a delicious meal, but it was just so so. 😒 I got the avocado steak tacos and Wes got the quesadilla. His came with a side of chips & salsa. The salsa used chili powder instead of actual peppers so it had a weird gritty texture (I tried a bite). Wes said he didn't mind that, but he didn't like how bland it was, and it could have benefited from some garlic and lime. My tacos were also really bland. Their redeeming qualities were the fresh made guac and street corn. We saw the chef cutting kernels off the cob to make the street corn as we walked in. That corn was the best part of the meal!

There were a couple of antique shops that I wanted to explore while we were downtown but camp called not long after lunch ended saying the dogs were cleaned and ready to go home. We managed to visit the Junk n' Treasure antique shop before we headed out of town (saw some interesting stuff but nothing worth buying). I also wanted to try the ice creamery but we were both too full for dessert. 🍦 All in all a successful day out. Next up, we're going to Grapevine, TX for their annual GrapeFest wine festival!!🍷🍇

I was so excited for the mummies that the actual art in the art museum became an afterthought. LOL There were lots of gorgeous paintings though. I almost forgot to include them in this post!

Wes & Erica's vacation photo album //DFW, TX - Art//March 2026

We went to the 🎈Balloon Museum: Let's Fly Dallas🎈 after lunch on the first day we were on our trip. It was a Tuesday around 3pm. Taking vacation in the middle of the week with no other public or school holidays is my absolute favorite! Besides us, there was only a pair of teens, another couple, and like 2 or 3 families at the art exhibit, and we all came in staggered times, so we had each of the rooms (mostly) to ourselves. Although, ironically, I kind of wish there was another couple or two with us in some of the rooms because several of the immersive activities were for multiple people, so it was hard for me to play by myself (Wes was too cool to join in 😒). Each room housed a balloon and/or air themed installation. I took pictures of each one with descriptions below, except for 3 - a VR video we watched (there was nothing to take a picture of), the one above of the inflatable polygons (it was pretty boring), and a room with an upside-down red tree (also boring). 

MY FAVORITE!!! OMG

The first room we entered was the best. It was a tunnel of mirrors with changing colors. I could have stood in there forever; so so pretty!!😍 Like, how do I get one of these installed at home? LOL The swirling lights were made by AI using tons of data from Excel spreadsheets. I texted my boss & coworker that I literally can't get away from Excel, not even on vacation! LOL

You can't walk from a bright mirrored tunnel into a dark room with two weird objects and not feel a little let down. 😕

The next room was pretty disappointing after the light tunnel. It was a giant Fleur de Lis with a kaleidoscope in the background. The kaleidoscope was made from images of naked dolls and the placard read that it symbolizes how the artist is truly exposed when we view her art.

The placard stated that this must have been what dinosaurs danced under. 🐉

As weird as the Fleur de Lis room was, the next one was the worst. 😑 I mean, the art was cool but the concept behind it was a bit creepy. It was a humungous disco ball that slowly inflated and deflated. It looked really neat and the entire room reflected it's light. The creepy part is that it represents the female orgasm. The artist said, Her Joy, over & over again and it played out of a speaker at the base of the ball. The tone and inflection of the words elongated as the ball inflated & deflated. The speaker was loud so we heard it the next few rooms, too. It felt like we stumbled into someone else's intimate moment and really should go, but we couldn't leave.

I tried to take some pictures to show how small I was compared to the inflated faces but I'm not sure if my lackluster photography skills did the trick.

Next, we walked into a plain room with some cartoon faces. We were meant to feel small amongst the giant smiles. The ceiling was domed inward to make the illusion work. 👀 An aside, I am the very slow and annoying museum goer who reads each placard, which is why I remember all the artists' intents and concepts behind each room. I won't read it if the art is self-explanatory, but I definitely will with this contemporary stuff. 

The next room reminded me of Yayoi Kusama's work, and I was really glad to get into a room that I enjoyed. (I wasn't impressed with anything we saw after the initial light tunnel, and I started to worry this was a waste of our afternoon.) I loved the feeling of standing in the middle of the glass balls; I must just like anything with mirrors. 😀 I think it was after this that we went into the VR room. We watched a video where we flew through Balloon Land (it reminded me of the Candyland boardgame) with inflatable versions of landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, and I think at one point, the Queen ate us. LOL The rest of the rooms were great, and the immersive/interactive part of the exhibits really ramped up. Oh, and I think the room after this was the first one where you could no longer hear the Her Joy orgasm blaring in the background. Yay!🎉

 🦋There was a giant LED butterfly hanging from the ceiling in the next room. You had to sit on a bench with some buddies and swing to light up the butterfly and make its wings flap & change colors. Wes wasn't super into it (or in to this this part of our trip in general) but I couldn't operate the butterfly by myself, so he had to help. There were lots of patchwork pillows scattered around for spectators to lay back and watch the butterfly take flight. Since we were the only ones in the room, we couldn't swing and watch, so we skipped the watching part.

These weren't supposed to be anything but they reminded me of a tardigrade floating through space.

The next room had a row of giant inner tubes and nothing else; it was completely white with some gentle music in the background. 🩰The artist described it as a "mesmerizing ballet", which sounds ridiculous, but I felt it. The inner tubes slowly undulated with the music. It was really simple but one of my favorite rooms in the museum.

Super hard to manage the ball on my own, but I did it!

After the peaceful tardigrade dance, we moved into a room of chaos. 😲This was the first room where I wished to discard my introvert ways and play with strangers. LOL The room had an extremely large beach ball with charcoal nibs sticking out. The point was the work as a team to guide the ball around and draw a picture. I was wearing a white shirt (that I sewed myself 💅) so I probably shouldn't have been playing with charcoal, but the museum employee told me there was a wash station right outside this room. Wes didn't want to play so I was on my own. The walls and ceiling were completely marked so I wanted to draw my picture on the floor.✎ It took a lot of effort to bounce the ball all the way down, but I managed a couple of lines. LOL

An inflatable city was in the next room, or at least what the artist imagined an inflatable city would look like. 🏨We were encouraged to walk around, over and under all the "buildings". I liked the colors & geometric patterns, and the eyes were cool, but this probably isn't a city I'd move to. LOL The tunnel out of the city lead to one of those desk perpetual motion machines, like the one with the balls that swing back & forth.

I really wished I had someone else to play with in this room because I couldn't push all the balls in time to get their perpetual motion thing going. 🏃I ran around like a madwoman swinging them all but couldn't manage it.🏃 Right as I was leaving, a small child & her mom came in. I almost went back to see if the mom would help me but I was also afraid that all the balls I left wildly swinging in there would knock over her child, so I quickly fled the scene. 😰

I brought home a pink souvenir Ginjo magnet. She lives on our fridge now with all our other travel trinkets.

Next, we entered the alien land of Ginjos. Their giant eyes followed us as we walked around their whimsical land. 👀 They were made from those stand-up punching bags so they wobbled about as we walked by. Wes noticed that the mural on the wall was one continuous painting. I assumed that it looped around but all four walls were different. Wes said this was the only exhibit that he actually felt "immersed" in. I, on the other hand, am a sucker and eat this stuff up.

This is probably tied with the Excel spreadsheet light tunnel as my favorite room in the museum.

The next room was a cyclone.🌪 I didn't get it at first because we walked in right after one ended and before it started up again. The balloons started swirling and flying all over the small room! I know it was just balloons and air, but the effect of them combined with how small the room is was just so neat!😲 Wes told me to walk right in the middle of it for a perfect photo op (ok, I came up with the photo op part, but don't I look cool in the top left picture!) Wes really doesn't like installation, contemporary, or immersive art but when pressed, he did admit that this room was his favorite.

❤Emo ❤Disco ❤Ball pit❤

After we left the cyclone, we walked down a long hallway to the grand finale! It was an enormous ball pit with strobe lights & disco balls that flashed in a light show every 10 minutes ❤ I am an only child so I'm used to playing by myself, and am comfortable in my own company, but man, did I wish for some friends to frolic around in this with me; in fairness, Wes was a good sport and did jump in for a bit. Regardless, I still had a blast wading through the balls, tossing them in time with the lights, and laying back to watch the show.

I wasn't 100% in love with the Balloon Museum-- some rooms were lame, but the rooms that I did enjoy, I truly ENJOYED 💓 And Wes & I got to be pretend Texans for the day. LOL The lady at the ticket counter asked if we were TX residents. I said no, and she asked if we'd like to be. I assumed she was wanting us to donate to the Chamber of Commerce or an art fund, but when I asked her to clarify, she was like, if you say you are, you'll get a discount. So, we lied and saved $8. 😂

The reason why I decided on Dallas in March was for the International Surrealism exhibit at the art museum. The starfish wearing the high heel was my favorite piece in the collection. 👠 The other 4 paintings were also super neat!

The other museum we went to, while still my idea, was more Wes's style. The next morning, we headed downtown for the Dallas Museum of Art (with no pretend resident discount 😒). There were two temporary exhibits that I wanted to see - International Surrealism (Wes was actually pretty excited for this one, too) and Constellations (contemporary jewelry). Our tactic of going on a weekday completely backfired on us, as it must have been school field trip day. The museum was overrun by teens😖; there was probably at least 2 or 3 high schools there. Luckily, they were all behaved and old enough to have assignments so instead of running around, they were walking with their teachers and completing their worksheets.

Along with the temporary exhibits, the museum just acquired some pieces by Roy Lichtenstein. This was the complete opposite of yesterday's experience -- Wes is a huge fan of the pop artist, while I was just meh. 😂  

I immediately recognized the Miró and Dalí (top) and Wes gravitated toward the Massons (bottom)

We headed into International Surrealism first. 😵 Salvador Dalí is the only Surrealist I am familiar with, but I like the movement so I knew I had to know some other artists. I didn't see anything familiar until I saw the Miró. Wes likes André Masson, and there was a couple of his works on display, too. Hard to see in the picture above, but his drawing of the hand holding the mermaids is a good one.

🎨 I won't ramble on about the Surrealists and how much I admire their imagination and ability to literally paint their random scattered thoughts, so above are some more works and we'll move onto the next exhibit.💍 Actually, just as we were about to walk into the jewelry room, a huge group of students went in... so we veered away and revisited some of our other friends at the museum. 

Wes & I have been watching the Lost Treasures of Egypt on Disney+ so it was cool to see the artifacts here on display and kind of know a little bit about how the archeologists come to find and study them.

I had to say hi to the mummy (there was a group of students who were also very impressed by her) and Wes went to the Japanese and Hindu art rooms. 👹 I'm glad we've already seen everything on previous trips because it was difficult to navigate with a bunch of teens running around everywhere.

The middle left broach and bottom necklace was all over the DMA website & Instagram for promo, so I assumed that we'd see them along with a handful of other pieces but there was SO MUCH MORE in Constellations. 

After a quick run through of the second & third floors of the museum, we headed back downstairs for the Constellations jewelry exhibit.💠 I assumed the exhibit would have a couple of really innovative and creative pieces ... like "a couple" as in maybe 10 or 20. Oh no... there was probably over 500 pieces of jewelry on display.💎It was insane and probably way too much to take in in one go around. 

One of my pen pals collects pressed pennies; Lorie, I couldn't find a pressed penny machine on our trip but I took the picture of the penny necklace (top left) for you! And the bottom right pin cushion broach and center sewn cloud necklace #yaysewing ✂

As we walked in, a museum staff member was folding these gigantic pieces of paper into accordions. She told us they were the descriptions for each piece of jewelry and asked if I wanted one. I wish I took a picture of me holding the foldout paper because it looked ridiculous. 😂 Imagine a cartoon of a stereotypical tourist holding a comically large map. At first, I read the description of each piece of jewelry, but it got too overwhelming after the first 15-20 items.

The exhibit was organized into where on the body the jewelry would be worn. So, all the necklaces in one room, headdresses in another, then all the rings, etc. I liked that part, but within each room, everything seemed haphazardly displayed. 😫 When I was following along with the foldout, I had to go from piece #3 along one wall to the complete opposite wall to find piece #4. You know how most museums try to tell a story and guide the viewer through each exhibit with a path; it might not be a marked path, but it still subconsciously guides your eyes & feet... well, there was absolutely none of that here. I had no idea where my eye was supposed to go toward and I felt like I must have missed something because I was just bouncing around from the wall to the center of the room back to the wall.

Wes wanted to show me the top two pieces - the necklace made from real cicadas and the necklace made from egg cartons. I liked the bottom display that showed jewelry made from everything in an egg carton.

One more gripe and we'll move onto the pros. The rooms were HOT😡 not like, oh it's a little warm in here, but legitimately hot & stuffy like the thermostat was set to 80℉ and it was physically uncomfortable to be in there (maybe the materials and gems needed to rest at a certain temperature?). I started sweating toward the last leg of displays, but I paid my $20 and I was going to look at each piece of jewelry. So I powered through. LOL 

I really liked how the artists stretched the boundaries of what "jewelry" could be. 💎None of the pieces could be worn in a practical setting but they just looked so damn cool 😎 I especially like the pieces that were made from unconventional materials, like egg cartons and recycled plastic bags. I'm ending with what I felt were the most spectacular pieces (above).

Wes & Erica's vacation photo album //DFW, TX - Food//March 2026

I saw an Instagram ad for The Balloon Museum last year and knew I had to go!! Installation/immersive art has become one of my favorite things to visit.

Earlier in March, Wes & I finally took my belated birthday trip to Carrollton, TX for 3 days of eating & shopping. 🚗 It kind of became an "OMG, I can't believe we both survived the insanity of our Q4 2025 & Q1 2026 work schedules" celebration trip. 🙌 I usually like to try new restaurants, but we've been keeping a list of places that we want to return to so that's what we did this time around. We also visited two art exhibits ... and I took A LOT of pictures so that'll be for the next blog post. 📷

I got us matching Nimbao shoes for Valentine's Day; we took them out on their first trip 💗 #romantic LOL

We got into Dallas for lunch. 🐖We went to the Arlington location of Hurtado BBQ back in 2024 and wanted to try the Dallas location this time around. It was much bigger and nicer; the Arlington location is more of a BBQ stand and this is an actual restaurant. Hurtado is Wes's favorite BBQ place, so I asked him what he thought and he said the food was just as good as he remembered. 😋 I (unknowingly) got two spicy sides -- elote and bacon potato salad-- so my meal was a little too hot, but it was still really good.

Coconut Paradise won a poll for Best Dessert Spot in Carrollton. All their desserts look very tasty but are also very perishable, so we can't ever try more than one thing. 😔

After lunch, we stopped in Coconut Paradise for drinks to bring back to the hotel. We always stay in the Marriott Courtyard Carrollton Dallas; one of these trips I'll actually take some pictures of it. 🏢 It is in the best location - right by the highway with Carrollton Town Center on one side of it, and the Korean shopping center on the other side. And it's right next to Wal-Mart, for when we forget to pack something. LOL Wes got the guava longan coconut water and I got the rose lychee soda from Coconut Paradise.

We went to BCD Tofu for dinner. 🍚 It was a Tuesday night, but the parking lot was packed. All the best restaurants are in Carrollton Town Center so it shouldn't have been a surprise, but I didn't expect so many people to be dining out on a weeknight. We both got the soon tofu combo, which came with traditional Korean banchan, tofu soup, and a smaller version of an entrée. I forgot about the combo and initially suggested that we each get a tofu and split an entrée, but Wes reminded me about it; and good thing too because it was SO MUCH food!! Everything was delicious, as usual. 🐟 I went with the mackerel this time.

I take a picture of the outside of each restaurant we visit -- regardless of how many times we've been there, and Wes goes, damn how many pictures of 85℃ do you need?? LOL

The next morning, we went to 85℃ Bakery for breakfast. One opened up in Edmond, OK but it isn't as good as the ones in TX. (There wasn't as much selection at the one back home.) My one complaint is that 85℃ changed their policy and now they won't heat up the savory pastries for you. 😒 I guess they assume everyone is getting their stuff to go, and can heat it up at home or work. Anyway, I got an 85℃ roll and a chocomatcha bun, and Wes got a coconut something and a guava something else. LOL I tried their sea salt caramel coffee again because it was listed as a "favorite" drink. It was way too salty the last time I got it, but I customized it to "less salt" this time and it was really good. ☕

🍹Blue Sushi has a really generous happy hour, running until 6:30pm!! I ordered from their super expansive happy hour menu.

For lunch we went to the Walnut Hill location of Blue Sushi Sake Grill. 🍣We went to another location one other time but decided this was the better one. Blue Sushi has Wes's all-time favorite sushi roll -- the Godzilla roll. 🐲 He got that along with the cherry bomb. I got one roll with faux tuna and a roll with actual tuna, for a side-by-side comparison. They both tasted the same to me. LOL The vegan tuna roll had a bunch of other stuff in it, so maybe that masked the vegan-ness of the tuna. It also had vegan caviar on top, which was a first for me.

I always want to be seated in the Godzilla booth, but we've been seated in the same section two years in a row. And we had the same waitress as last time, which is crazy because the last time we came here was in 2024!

We originally planned to drive into Dallas for dinner at Nando's, but thunderstorms were in the forecast so we stayed in Carrollton. ⛈ We had dinner at DAQ Korean Chicken (it was a Mad for Chicken the last time we were here). The concept, and Wes noticed even the decor & table arrangement, was the same though - spicy Korean fried chicken. 🍗Wes got the chicken tenders with Korean sweet sauce. He wasn't impressed saying it wasn't spicy or complex. I got the shrimp fried rice, which was good but definitely needed the sauce that came on the side. It would have been way too bland without it.

🌧💧The thunderstorm warning turned into a flash flood warning throughout the evening. 💧🌧 It started pouring while we were eating. ☔ I was hoping we could wait it out, but the rain was not letting up. Luckily, we parked pretty close to the restaurant so the walk to the car wasn't bad, but all the close spots at the hotel were taken so we had to park pretty far away and were completely drenched when we got to our room. 😫 The worst part was that DAQ wasn't even that good to be worth getting all soggy for. 

Our last meal of the trip was breakfast at the food court in Ranch 99. I always get my congee, but I might have to change it up the next time we go. They had so much good stuff out!! A lot more than previous times we've been. 🍲 They had their entire line up of dim sum options, rice bowls with pork belly, and so many good lunch & dinner options that I wanted to buy, but Wes reminded me that perishables don't do well in the car for the long drive home 😔 After eating, we got our grocery list items from the store (mostly stuff for my mom; we found the absolute cutest Ranch 99 tote bag!) and headed home.

Oh yeah, I mentioned we did some other (non-grocery) shopping. 💸 A friend told me about Dillard's Clearance Centers in Lewisville & Irving. Wes needs new work shoes, so we went to both locations to look for some. No luck. 😑There wasn't much at the Lewisville location and the Irving location didn't have men's shoes at all. I did end up with a new work out top for Pilates. I say "non-grocery shopping", but we mostly got food & snacks. LOL There isn't much else we really need in our minimalist life... but there is always room for snacks. 🍭🍪 We stopped in the Denton Buc-ee's on the way home and loaded up! They had an entire baby aisle, and I wanted to buy everything for Ezra, but Lacey & her mom take frequent Buc-ee's trips with him so I restrained myself.

No unicornos at Kinokuniya but there were some in the impulse aisle at Ranch 99.

There was some cute stuff at Daiso and Teso Life, but I didn't buy too much. We only got snacks from Teso. I think it's because a Daiso opened in Oklahoma, so it's no longer a treat to come here. I was super disappointed with Kinokuniya 😠 Lacey & I have started collecting trinkets to set out as ⭐good luck charms⭐ to help us during crochet night. I had an entire list of tokodoki ones I was going to get for us. Kinokuniya had literally every other blind box imaginable, but not a single tokidoki.

The Dallas Art Museum had a collection of Surrealist art as part of one of the temporary exhibits. 

In between all our amazing meals, we went to the Balloon Museum and the Dallas Art Museum. 🎨We had two very different experiences at each art exhibit. Give me a minute to get my pictures together and I'll write all about it!! 

Wes & Erica's vacation photo album// DFW, TX // August 2025

We took a quick trip to Texas in August to see Ghost on their Skeletour (for Wes) and to see the Return to Infinity: Yayoi Kusama exhibit (for me). I've been told, more than once 😖, that our vacations seem like an exhausting to-do list instead of a relaxing experience, so this time those two activities were literally all we did -- no extra stops, no last minute plans.😊 (I actually also wanted to go to Fuzz Lab, but their hours are weird & there wasn't a location near our hotel, which meant we'd have to stress to fit it in, so we skipped it.) We got to spend quality time lounging around in our nice hotel and I got a lot of crocheting done on our downtime.

Probably the largest sandwich I've see in my lifetime. I ate about 3/4 of it.

Wes has a couple of coworkers from the Dallas division of Paycom so we're always getting good restaurant recommendations. We had lunch at Weinberger's Deli in Grapevine, TX. (Downtown Grapevine is super cute, and I would have wanted to walk around their historic main street, which is railroad and dinosaur themed, if it wasn't 102℉ that afternoon.🌞) The deli was packed, even though it was around 2pm when we got there. Wes got Morgan's Turkey sandwich, which had both turkey & pepperoni, and I got the Vera Cuban. There are soooo many different sandwiches on the menu; it was hard to choose but I went with vera because it had cilantro on it. 🥪 We both liked our giant sandwiches, but also both wished we had gotten something else (Wes the muffuletta and me the lamb special). Wes saw a billboard for Grape Fest, advertised as the best wine festival in the region, annually in September in Grapevine on our drive out of town. 🍷 It's been added to the 2026 vacation itinerary! 

We went to Nando's (Dallas location -- about an hour away but so worth it) for dinner. 🐔 I learned from No Such Thing As A Fish that the Nando's franchise is the world's largest buyer of South African art because they decorate each of their restaurants with art made by indigenous artists... like they actively seek out native & emerging artists to feature in their various locations. So, of course the first thing I do when we walk in is look at all the art on the walls! 🎨 The menu even had art on it and a QR code that takes you to the artists from that location's social medias. That aspect of the restaurant is super neat, and the food was delicious, too! 😋 I rarely see livers on offer so I got them (even though I much prefer gizzards). OMG they were so tasty!! Wes isn't a huge fan of livers, either, and he agreed that they were very good. They had several sauce options to choose from; I got the Peri-paradise sauce over the livers and the Peri-ranch over the Brussels sprouts (Wes went with medium). We also sampled the lemon & herb sauce, which Wes really liked but I didn't. We got the Naughty Nata (Portuguese custard tart) for dessert, to-go because we were stuffed but couldn't turn down a sweet treat. LOL

I should have taken a picture of the fighter jet/airplane decor inside. It was definitely a theme restaurant. 

The next morning, we had breakfast at West Side Café, an airplane themed diner that is close enough to some sort of base or training facility that we could hear jets flying overhead while we ate. 🛫 Not sure if they built it there on purpose to really lean into the theme. LOL I wanted to try their bacon, cheddar & chive "tater kegs" but they're only served at lunch. (My newest foodie goal is to eat a tater keg -- a large tater tot stuffed with something yummy.) I ended up with Mama Sue's hashbrown casserole and French toast instead. The food was okay. I liked that their syrup is warmed up and Wes liked that his bacon was hickory smoked instead of Applewood smoked. 

We had no plans until dinner that evening, so we stopped in Café Azul on our way back to the hotel to get coffee to sip on the rest of the day. ☕ The little coffee shop looked so familiar but I don't think we've been before. I got the Mexican mocha and Wes got the churro latte. We stayed in Fort Worth's Cultural District, and right across the street from the Kimball art museum. I checked their website to see if they had any good special exhibits but nothing peaked our interest. Again, it would have been fun to walk around the area if it wasn't 100℉. Man, I HATE summer. 😠 Ugh.

I've never been a fan of bologna but the slices we got on the meat & cheese plate were really good. Wes was not impressed.

Our next meal (late lunch... early dinner... whatever meal you eat at 3:30pm) was at Taste of Europe, another restaurant recommended by one of Wes's coworkers. There is a small grocery store with Eastern European foods at the back of the restaurant. The market had some interesting things that we wanted to try, but nothing was going to keep well in the car while we were out & about. I tried a chicken kiev for the first time. It was good and I loved the lemon butter. 🧈 I could dip anything in that stuff! LOL I tried one of Wes's perogies. It was so heavy; no idea how he ate all 10 of them. I guess we wouldn't be having dinner until late night after the concert so it was a good idea to have a nice meal beforehand. 

The Ghost concert was a phones-free event (so no pictures for the next few paragraphs😢). The concept was terrifying at first (no phones... what if there's a terrorist attack, medical emergency, bad weather??!?! 😳), but it ended up being okay. Ghost's frontman claimed that not having your phone made you "more engaged with the band", but honestly, I think it was to protect his proprietary material -- no concert footage leaked on YouTube. I may have been a bit more engaged but I was also 100x more anxious. 😵 The concert was at the very nice & CLEAN Dickies arena. The employees placed our phones in Yondr bags for us as we walked in, and there were more employees outside of the arena waiting to unlock our bags as we exited. I thought the process would be more chaotic, resulting in a crush... and none of us having a phone to call for an ambulance, but it was very well organized. Kudos to the Dickies arena staff! 👍

Wes loved the concert; Ghost is one of his favorite bands, and that's all that really matters. My opinion is just blah, blah, blah, noise. 💀 This was our second time seeing them live. (First concert was at their 2022 Imperatour) I thought that maybe the first show wasn't amazing because the venue wasn't packed and our energy was off (it was in Lincoln, NE... not exactly a hotbed for heavy metal music). But this time, the Dickies arena housed a sold-out crowd and the vibe was top notch, and I still felt like Ghost wasn't having the time of their lives like we were. 😑 I guess my main problem is that it sounded so rehearsed-- exactly as they do on Pandora; at one point I wondered if it was even live. I know, its a weird complaint that the band sounded too good but that's just me. 🤷

Overall, the show was fun & we enjoyed ourselves.  I've become a Ghost fan over the years and I could recognize the hits. 🎶They played a few of the songs that Wes really likes that they didn't play the last time we saw them; I think he really likes the new Skeletá album so it was a good tour to go to. We wanted t-shirts but the merch line was insanely long before the show. I volunteered to step out during a lull to grab the shirts we wanted, but by the time I got the merch booth, our sizes were sold out. 😒 We had planned to get sushi after the show (Blue Sushi Sake Grill was just 10 minutes away), but it took ages to get out of the parking garage and back onto the main street. We settled for Taco Bell on the way back to the hotel instead; their taco pizza was no replacement for delicious sushi, but beggars can't be choosers when it comes to dinner at 11:30pm.

Hands down the best breakfast I've had in a while!! 😍 Definitely the best mimosa I've ever had.

The next morning, we had breakfast at Lucile's. 😋 We've been keeping a list of restaurants to return to each time we're in Texas; Wes has Hurtado BBQ and Blue Sushi Sake Grill, and I'm adding Lucile's. We ate off the breakfast menu, but I'm dying to try their lunch & dinner options. Lucile's is a cute little house built on a median and inside is filled with open air New Orleans vibes. Super cute decor and very  welcoming. Wes said his bacon was cooked perfectly. I got the crab lump benedicts, with huge lumps of fresh crab. 🦀 Everything we got was so good!

After breakfast, we headed back into Dallas for the art museum. It was still kind of early when we got there, so we got street parking right in front of the museum. 😁 I don't think we've ever been so lucky with street parking. We were only planning to visit the Kusama exhibit, but our tickets came with free general admission so I paid the max time (2 hours) so we could walk around. We got back to the car literally as the parking app's timer went off!

Oh how nice it would be to be a woman spinning yarn in a shop with her husband and cozy dog. #wistful 

The museum also had a pair of shoes that Yayoi Kusama made; she stuffed the shoes with balls of paper-or maybe it was rocks- and painted them, so they were no longer useful. I think it is supposed to represent being saddled down with ills to where you can't function fully as a human anymore.

The Kusama exhibit wasn't really worth the price 😒 so I'm glad we got general admission into the museum as well. I thought it would be larger, but it literally is a 10x10ft box. With no ventilation. There are glass pumpkins all around and the walls & ceilings are mirrors so we were standing in a pumpkin field, completely surrounded. Very cool concept... but there is a time limit and we were accompanied by a museum guard. We could only go in there one time for only 90 seconds. (When we went to the exhibit in Bentonville, we could go in as many times as we wanted and linger for as long as we liked.) I didn't mind the time constraint, but what ruined the experience for me was the guard. She clicked her stop watch when we got in and did not take her eyes off us; she was just doing her job and there was no way for her to be invisible in such a tiny setting, but it was truly distracting. We were free to take pictures & selfies and talk or whatever, but it felt so weird with her there. 😫 I couldn't feel engaged or immersed in my "immersive art experience" (which made me think of the Ghost concert the night before and decide that, yeah, I actually was pretty engaged then after all). 

We tried to find all the new acquisitions since its been a few years since our last museum visit.

The fuzzy pink closet was my favorite! Bottom right: my spoils from the gift shop. I've looked through the Dalí cookbook and there is nothing that I can make as a home chef 😢

We've been to the Dallas Art Museum once or twice before so we just took a quick tour around this time. Wes wanted to revisit the East Asian collection, and I had to say hi to the mummy (I'm obsessed!) I think we saw all the new (to us) pieces, and hit all the collections on the map.

Mummies are truly the best; I am still mad that we missed the Immersive King Tut tour a few years ago.

Check out the amazing detail on these two! 😲

The artist sculpted wind in the one on the left. WIND. How do you sculpt the concept of weather?! It really looks like the man's garment is billowing, and it blew my mind.

The piece on the right is made from beads. Tons & tons of tiny beads!

It was lunchtime after our museum visit. We drove up to Mitsuwa Marketplace in Plano, TX. I imagined it was a shopping center (the website boasted of a food court and Kinokuniya bookstore), but it was actually a giant Japanese grocery store. It was cool to walk around and look, but it wasn't really what we wanted for lunch. The Kinokuniya was a small stall in the store; kind of disappointing 😞 but we can cross another Kinokuniya location off our list. There was another stall with gumball machines, but with blind box figurines instead of gumballs inside. Each cost 3-4 tokens, and tokens were $5 each... no thank you, I can buy a legit tokidoki Unicorno for cheaper than that.

I should have gotten a picture of all the blind box gumball machines.

Luckily for us, we were in the Asian district of Plano and had plenty of other restaurant options. We went to Sichuan Folk, which was just across the street. All the diners were Asian and the menu was in Chinese, so we knew this place would be good. 😄 They had beef soup dumplings, which was a treat (I usually only come across the pork or veggie ones). I wasn't going to get a spicy dish, but I figured I had to since we were at a Sichuan restaurant. 🌶 I got the cold sesame noodles. They were so good but so spicy!! Wes got a spicy pork dish.

There was a boba place next door so we got drinks for the drive home. I got my standard go to... the strawberry matcha latte.🍵🍓 I liked that it had chunks of fresh strawberry in it. Wes got a fruit tea, and he said he didn't like the chunks of fruit. Opposites attract, I guess. 😆 We had to order from a kiosk, which forced us to customize the drinks. No forgetting to add boba, or questioning the sugar level or how much ice you want. I think all boba places should install these because I can never hear the cashier, who always mumbles, over the loud trendy music. LOL

🚗We went to Buc-ee's to fill up on gas & snacks and take our last potty break before the long drive home. We usually try to leave town mid-morning, but decided to stay a bit later since it was summertime, so the sun would be up longer. My night vision has majorly deteriorated but traffic was fine and we got home before it got too dark. 🌓Another Texas trip in the books! And a relaxing one at that. So long DFW, see you next year for Grape Fest! 🍇