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! 🍇

Wes & Erica's vacation photo album // DFW, TX // December 2024

 

Another year, another trip to eat & shop at Carrollton Town Center. 🍴 Although this year, we branched out and ate & played all throughout the DFW area. The hotel we usually stay at in Carrollton was full so Wes found us a place in Farmers Branch. I was a bit worried at first but it turned out to be a more central location for all of our activities. I did so much driving 🚗(which I was also dreading but the traffic was surprisingly not violent nor overly congested). Our first stop was an errand for one of Wes's friends. He ordered a computer part from Micro Center and charged us with picking it up. I assumed Micro Center would be a small shop in a strip mall but is gigantic. Should be called Mega Macro Center!! It was like the size of two Best Buys or one very large Circuit City (remember those from back in the day?) 

Vegan tuna rice cakes (top left picture) was the best part of lunch!!

Our first actual vacation stop was lunch. We went to Blue Sushi Sake Grill for dinner a few years ago. I wasn't impressed and Wes said it was just okay, but he actually loved it. When we were planning all the restaurants we'd try this year, I mentioned sushi and he suggested giving this place another go. 🍣 He said the roll he got was really good & unique, and that he liked the Godzilla theme and vibe of the restaurant. I was hoping that we'd get to sit by the Godzilla mural this time, but our hostess sat us at almost the same table as our last visit. We came during happy hour and our waitress talked us into getting all the specials. LOL Wes ordered the same roll as last time and said it was just as delicious, but I again, wasn't super impressed with my meal. 😕 I thought the shishito peppers had too much shallot and my spicy octopus roll was entirely too spicy 🔥 (like it overwhelmed the octopus). One thing saved my meal and that was the vegan tuna. Wes refused to try it but it was SO GOOD; like a thousand times tastier than I expected! Blue Sushi Sake Grill is known for its vegan sushi options. I didn't try any last time, but I was really curious about their Vegan Tuna Rice Cakes. Their vegan tuna had the same texture and taste of actual tuna. Now I know that if we got back (which I probably will veto next time), I should only get the vegan options.

I got my first hole-in-one with the bonus on the Connect 4 hole.

We went to play crazy golf next. 🏌 We've played putt putt a few times (Wes is a huge mini golf fan) but never crazy golf. It is so much better! Each hole had an added game attached to it, like it was ski ball and you had to hit the ball into the highest slot, or it was Tetris and you had to maneuver the ball around the blocks. There was the Diamond, Emerald, Ruby (our course), Amber, and Sapphire courses. I had a lot of fun even though my shots were so dismal that the automated tv screen displayed a depressing message after each shot. I kept getting the message that read, What a string of bad luck!, literally after every stroke. LOL 😅 I know & admit that I am terrible at sports (and basically any activity that has a game element to it) so I wasn't mad about it. I actually had a ton of fun! In the end, I did end up with two hole-in-ones, and one of them included the special bonus shot. 👍 My final score was 330 and I was #61 for the day (I think only 70 players had come in so far). Wes managed a 410 and was in third place for the day. I would totally come back every year and try to play on a different course (they're automatically assigned when you come in, so I think its completely random which one you'll get on any given day). My score most likely won't improve, but each course has a set of different games, and I'd like to get the opportunity to fail at all of them. 😆

So much Hello Kitty merch for her 50th anniversary. I loved the Texas kitties and almost bought one for me & Lacey.

We went "home" to the Doubletree by Hilton Near the Galleria (the hotel was seriously called that but it was in Farmers Branch instead of Dallas) to rest a bit before our shopping at Daiso, Teso, and Kinokuniya. Shopping wasn't all that this year 😔; there wasn't that much cute washi tape or pen pal supplies, and I think there is less and less tokidoki stuff each time we go. Kinokuniya was actually closed for the day, so we went back tomorrow.

Those noodles changed my life.

We had dinner at Fat Ni BBQ. 😋 It is a skewer restaurant; you order off a sheet of paper, like at sushi restaurants but they're all types of meats on skewers. 🍖 I wanted one of everything but had to practice restraint. LOL We weren't sure how big the pieces of meat were so we only ordered a few. They're pretty small portions so I would 100% opt for more next time. Each skewer can be made spicy or not spicy. We got a few of each. They're all flavored with Asian 5-spice blend. Everything we got was amazing, but the Oil Spill Noodles were the super star of the meal. It is flat noodles drenched in chili oil with bok choy and roasted garlic & scallions. It was just the right amount of spicy. 

The next morning, we had breakfast at the Grand Prairie location of 85℃. It's a smaller location with less options than the Carrollton one (and the guy at the counter wouldn't heat up my pastry like they do in Carrollton 😢), but it was also much closer to our next activity. I wanted to try the new toffee latte that was on special but they were out of toffee 😑 I got a Matcha Oat Pumpkin Spice Latte instead. I thought it might be too many flavors but it all blended together really well, and it was the perfect hot drink for a chilly morning (it was actually cold in December in TX this year! ❅). Everything was delicious, as always.

The bakery was next to an Asian "mall," so we took a walk around after we finished breakfast. It was bringing back flashbacks of the Asian malls I went to when we visited my dad's side of the family in Houston & Dallas when I was younger; herbal shops that smelled awful, gold & jewelry stores, and all the slippers, fuzzy blankets and silly imported fashions. Most of the shops that I was interested in were still closed so there wasn't too much to see. The food court looked amazing and I almost wished we came hungry for lunch. We did our grocery shopping at Hong Kong market since it was there, and we figured we might not have much time tomorrow to shop at 99 Ranch. It is smaller but still had all the stuff we needed. There were flyers advertising a dragon dance competition at Asia Times Square later in December; I wish we could have come back for it. 🐉 I wonder who won.  

Didn't like much of the art, but here are a few pieces I thought was cool. 

We went to the Arlington Art Museum next to see the Disney costume exhibit. (I took soooooo many pictures so we'll save that experience for tomorrow's blog post. 💻) The "museum" is an itty bitty section of a much larger event space. The event space had a giant E-sports arena, which seemed to be the main attraction of the center. Parking at the museum was a total rip off. 😡 There was no street parking so we were forced to pay $10 to park in a deserted lot that was at least two blocks away. There was zero security or even a sidewalk for us to walk back to the main entrance. The museum's permanent collection was a small gallery of amateur student art. It was very obviously student art. Every single piece was purposefully woke and aggressively thought provoking, i.e. there was a section of unnecessarily graphic abortion art. I prefer to view art and then come to my own conclusions about it, but everything in this gallery was screaming, look at how horrible people like you have made the world, and now it's up to me, a righteous artist, to save all of humanity with my opinions. Just so gross and pretentious. At least the permanent collection was free with our Disney ticket so I didn't waste any money on it.

Next was lunch. We ate at Hurtado BBQ--another good pick. 😋 [I think we choose good really good restaurants on this trip. I usually look on Instagram for places to try but sometimes the food isn't as good as portrayed in the pictures, but not this time. Every place was so yummy!] Hurtado is one of those small barbeque joints that is open until they're sold out of meat smoked for the day. It was really busy even after the lunch rush (I think it was around 2:30 or 3pm when we went). My eloté brisket bowl was perfectly balanced. Not too much sauce or too much lime, like I've had at other places. Wes said his Spanish rice was amazing because it was cooked in the meats' drippings.

After lunch, we stopped in White Rhino coffee for an afternoon snack before driving back to the hotel. ☕ I got a Whole Latte Love, which is a lavender honey coffee. It had a very strong and distinctive flavor. Wes said his cold brew was a little on the weak side, but still good. The café advertised a local vendor market the following weekend, which makes me want to consider doing smaller café shows here. Any recommendations? Hurtado and White Rhino made Arlington worth visiting, but I didn't really like the city much. It's definitely not as nice as other Dallas suburbs. 

How cool is this place? There are bird cages hanging from the ceiling and flying saucers printed on the dinnerware! 

We had dinner at Ida Claire. I 100% recommend this place! The Southern voodoo/tarot, ancient vibe is so cool! 😎 It just had the best atmosphere as soon as we walked in. The food & drinks was also really good. There were whole pieces of lobster in my seafood pasta 🦞 Wes got the chicken and waffles. He doesn't like his food touching, and usually chicken and waffles is served with the chicken on top of the waffles and then a bunch of toppings. But, Ida Claire had the chicken on the side of the waffles and all the different syrups & butter in their own separate ramakins. There was a Thunder game on at the bar. We sat close enough to where we could watch it. It felt weird rooting for the Thunder when literally everyone else was rooting for the Dallas Mavericks. The Thunder won so they can all suck it. LOL

Our last meal before we left town was my customary black egg congee at 99 Ranch. I look forward to it every year. 😊 I got a side of taro cakes this year (they didn't have my eggplant). We already did our grocery shopping yesterday so we didn't really need to walk around the ranch. The cosmetics shop where I always get my face masks changed their hours from 10am to 11am so I couldn't get any this year. 😥 I guess we could have waited around for an hour, but we were both pretty anxious to get back to Athena & Zephyr. 🐕 We stopped in Buc-ee's on our way home and bought a ton of stuff, but I didn't take any pictures. It was fun to do activities and try restaurants outside of Carrollton this year. I already spotted some new places I want to try next time while we were driving around. Everything we ate was good, but to recreate the perfect meal I would choose: oil spill noodles from Fat Ni and the brisket eloté from Hurtado. With a side of the vegan tuna rice cakes from Blue Sushi and the fried oysters from Ida Claire, and the cocktail from Ida Claire for my drink. 🍹 And the matcha oat pumpkin spice latte from 85℃ for my dessert. 

Preview of the Heroes & Villians Disney costume exhibit.

The main reason why we spent so much time outside of Carrollton was because I wanted to see the Disney costume exhibit. 👗 The costumes are from the Disney archives so they're the actual pieces that the actors wore on screen. I knew it would be fantastic, but it was a thousand times more awesome than I thought it would be. I'm not even a Disney fan, just a massive lover of clothes & fashion. More on that to come... 

Wes and Erica's vacation photo album // Carrollton, TX // December 2023

I was so excited when I learned that there is a Meow Wolf exhibit within driving distance!!

We took our annual trip to Carrollton, TX for my birthday a few weeks ago. We sampled as many restaurants as we could, I got my stationary haul from Daiso, and we spent a day at Grapevine Mills Mall (Meow Wolf, baby!! 😍). 

This post will be 90% pictures of the weird trippy Meow Wolf exhibits. 

We got in a little after lunchtime and started at H-Mart. This was our first time on the Korean side of town. (We also saw a strip mall with all East Asian restaurants; that'll be bookmarked for next year's trip.) There is a food court in the grocery store so we had lots to choose from. I decided on a spicy octopus bento box from Noblu Bento Express and Wes got tofu soup from Chan. 🐙I naively thought I'd get a giant serving of stir fried octopus with my rice, but it was chopped up octopus pieces mixed in a ton of onion and kimchi. I was worried at first since I don't really like kimchi (but there was still a generous helping of octopus), and it ended up being really good (I realized that I do like cooked kimchi). We each got portions of banchan with our meals; Wes said the kimchi from my restaurant had more garlic and tasted better than the portion from his restaurant. I don't really like the side dishes so he got all of mine. 

We walked around H-Mart after lunch, and drooled over all of the cuts of meat used for Korean barbeque. I always want to buy so much when we come to Carrollton but it's never feasible since hotel refrigerators are tiny and we have to leave everything in the car. We went to Somisomi for dessert where I got the best ice cream.🍦😋 The fish was filled with red bean paste and sat atop my matcha soft serve, which was topped with Oreo crumbles, sprinkles and a strawberry.🍓 Wes got their house cold brew, which he said was good. 

After a quick rest at the hotel, we headed to Carrollton Town Center for some shopping. It was probably 8pm or later, and the shopping center was hoppin'! I was surprised at how busy all the stores are, I think I notice this every year and still cannot get over how all these people have the energy to be out and about after working all day (I do absolutely nothing on weeknights because I'm a tired old lady👵). Wes always likes to look in the Kinikuniya bookstore. It was completely remodeled from when we came last year. It barely had any books left in it! It's mostly collectables and anime merch now. They've also reduced their tokidoki section😒 still got a super cute Unicorno, though. 

We got the turnip cakes as our appetizer and while they were tasty, I have to say that the ones my mom makes are better. 

We went to Thai Noodle Wave for dinner. The food was average ... neither good nor bad (Wes agreed with my assessment). I got their monthly special, which was a chicken noodle stir fry dish. 🐓It was 95% chicken and 5% noodles; I would have preferred much more noodles. The most notable feature of the restaurant is that they had a Justin Bieber playlist going all night with selections from his entire body of work.

We stopped in 7 Leaves to get some drinks for dessert and headed back to the hotel. I got a mung bean milk tea. It was good but had a lot more mung bean than I was expecting. And thus concludes day 1. Wes said his tofu soup we had for lunch was his favorite meal and I liked my ice cream best.

Day 2 is literally an entire day at the Meow Wolf exhibit. We had tickets for 1:20pm but got an early start (I was very excited) so we hung out at the arcade at Grapevine Mills mall to pass the time. Wes got to play some games that we don't have here - Marvel v. Capcom 2 - and I "learned" traditional Japanese taiko. 🥁 (I actually didn't score that high but all the instructions were in Japanese so I had no idea how to play.😅) 

Before I forget, we had breakfast at Paris Baguette. I felt a tinge of regret abandoning 85℃ Bakery Café, but we go there every year so I wanted to try something new. Luckily, our pastries from Paris Baguette were really good (if they weren't, I would have insisted we return to 85℃ for second breakfast. 😂LOL). I liked my savory one better than my peppermint mochi donut, and Wes preferred his twist to the cherry Danish. 

Alright, back to the mall. We played arcade games and walked around some, but still had about an hour to kill. #bored I ended up calling Meow Wolf and got our ticket time changed from 1:20pm to 12:40pm. (Their booking service is top notch, by the way 👍)

Now for Meow Wolf - when we presented our tickets, our "portal guide," Moon🌜 told us about the strange happenings in the house. The story centered around a pre-teen, Jared. One of his relatives (an uncle, I think) got admitted into the hospital for a bad cough. Jared has an imaginary pet flying axolotl named Happy Gary. Happy Gary told him about a place called the Real Unreal where he can find a cure.  Jared wrote a get well card for his uncle telling him not to worry because he'll be back soon with the cure. Then he ran away from home... supposedly. 

Our job was to investigate the house (touching and opening everything, Moon said) and search for Jared. 🏡We enter the house and look for clues. Jared's notes and drawings are strewn about, and there are various laptops and phone/tablets with short video clues. Wes was much more invested in solving this mystery than I was. I was curious, but mostly wanted to experience the art. Because of this, I lead us astray and we didn't really get to fully explore the house. (and thus missing a lot of clues)

There is a giant refrigerator in the kitchen. Once you open it, it leads to a hallway into the portal aka the art exhibit. 👽I was super pumped to find this and took us inside. We hadn't finished looking through the house, yet, and I kind of took us through the exhibit backwards. There are a ton of different places to explore in the Real Unreal universe. There is a two story garden🌿🌸, a neon room with a stage, an arcade👾, and tons of twisty hallways that lead into other rooms. My favorite room was a vintage looking one with lots of severed hands and heads. Wes liked the goopy black slime monster statue. 

My favorite room.

Wes's favorite and my second favorite character.

After walking through the Real Unreal and not finding out what happened to Jared (I honestly kind of forgot about his disappearance), Wes reminded me that there is an entire section of the house that we didn't even walk through. 🏠So we went back through the second story of the house in search of more clues. The "correct" way to enter the Real Unreal is through the bathroom. There is a weird monster sitting on the toilet and once you walk through the bathroom, you're in the neon art exhibit.

Some people were wearing black light glasses. I didn't know how or where to purchase them or else I would have gotten us each a pair. I asked a guy what they're for and he leant me his for this neon garden. It just enhanced the colors. Wes thinks that there were secret black light clues we missed.

We walked through the ENTIRE house & every single one of it's portals probably 3 or 4 times and were none the wiser about Jared's whereabouts. 😕We found out that time somehow stopped at 7:06pm, Jared walked by the toilet sitting slime monster and his house turned into a psychedelic neon art installation. Tickets were pretty pricy so if there was an end goal, I didn't want to miss it. However, if there is no answer, I can suspend belief and accept that Jared is just enjoying life in another realm... but Wes really wanted to solve it. In the end, we decided that its not meant to be solved and no one knows what happened to Jared or his sick uncle. I went home, did some Googling, and found out that all the Meow Wolfs are connected. They're each a portal to each other so Jared can be anywhere. 

We wanted to do some Christmas shopping when we were roaming the mall before our ticket time, but I know that Meow Wolf has a no bag policy and I didn't want to leave our stuff in the car. So, we walked around the humungous circular mall another 2 or 3 times trying to remember which stores we wanted to get stuff from. 🛍We decided we needed a snack after all that walking so I got some sour cream & onion curly fries from the Potato Corner. (Wes just got Taco Bell.) 

A place that only serves fries!! 🍟😋

We were also thirsty after all that walking so we grabbed some drinks on our way back to the hotel and then I sat my ass down. 😫I think that is the most walking I've done in a while. LOL I got a lychee coconut water with rose from Coconut Paradise. Funny story (okay, not "haha funny" but "humanity sucks" funny)- The man in the picture in the top left walked up to the counter, asked for a free sample, ate it and walked away without a reaction or thank you. The guy working the counter looked so sad & dejected. Wes got a coffee from 85℃ Bakery Café since we missed it in the morning. 

We went to Mad for Chicken for dinner. It served hot, fresh, twice fried Korean chicken wings. 🍗They were SO GOOD, my favorite meal of this trip. We got complimentary chili dusted popcorn, and ordered some dumplings for our appetizer. We got a mix of spicy and regular ones. They were both good. Everything was made-to-order so it came out piping hot. 🔥They had sports & popular tv shows on, but one of the tv's had random trivia about anime, country flags, and movie titles spelled out with emojis. I did terribly but it was still fun to play along. 

The next morning, we got breakfast at 99 Ranch and did our grocery shopping before heading back to Oklahoma. They have the best black preserved egg congee and I can't have a birthday Carrollton trip without it. 🍚One of Wes's coworkers requested strawberry Choco-pies so we grabbed some for him one our way out (they didn't have the Choco-pie brand but we got a comparable substitute).

What I would give to swim in those vats of congee!

We stopped in Buc-ee's for some more groceries and Christmas shopping on our way out of Texas. Nothing too exciting except for that I saw Santa Buc-ee! 🎅

Ironically, I didn't take any pictures of the stuff we got at Buc-ee's. But look at the awesomeness I got from Daiso, Teso, and random other shops!!

And now I am 39 years old. The first few times we took my birthday trip, we just ate and stayed one night. Then we started staying a few days and adding other activities into the mix. Last year we went fabric shopping, and the year before that we went to Rainbow Vomit. It is a similar installation art exhibit where you wander around a building looking for clues. Rainbow Vomit had more unique art and the puzzle was actually solvable (I got a magnet for my prize!) so we both liked it better. I did still really also enjoy Meow Wolf. Now to plan for 2024... what adventures will we have?

Last view from Meow Wolf gardens.