6/19/2011 Souvenir Shopping

Part of The Oasis is a gift shop. They had some great tacky Texas souvenirs, but they were a little pricy (very pricy, actually). My tiny bathroom in my apartment in Maine is decorated in red, white, and blue Texas tackiness, so I'm always on the lookout for fun, new, small additions. This shop had a beautiful glass dish that looked like the Texas flag. It turns out it was meant to be a sushi dish, but I thought it would make a fabulous soap dish. Until I saw the $32 price tag, that is.

But that got us started on a quest for Texas souvenirs. We did some Google searches and found the Texas Store in Barton Creek Mall. It was on the way home (at least, not too far out of the way) and the Yelp reviews made it sound perfect. We went to all the trouble to get there and saw this:

It's closed!! Must be fairly recent, but it doesn't matter, we weren't going to be able to shop there. We went ahead and explored the mall a little, even though neither of us are big mall shoppers. Found the Apple Store and the Clarks shoe store, so it was worth the walk around.

We also read about Austin Gift Company but weren't sure it was going to suit our needs. But with the Texas Store being closed, suddenly Austin Gift Company sounded really good. Turns out it was really close to the mall and was open on Sunday (yes, we called ahead this time). It's part souvenir store, part craft/antique mall kind of store where folks sell stuff on a commission basis. I didn't find a soap dish but we both found some fun trinkets. And I took pictures of some of the roadrunner stuff I saw to send to my mom. This one was roadrunner AND Texas.