Houston we have a problem

We got to see more of Austin today. Spent quite a bit of time there, actually. The morning consisted of seeing the Flag Ship Whole Foods in downtown in order to kill time. Here, we also got a quick bite to eat since we were not sure if we were going to eat at Facebook. I don't know where we got the assumption that we would be provided lunch haha. At Whole Foods we got a roll of sushi to share, which was of course delicious.

Finally at noon, we met up with our host in front of her office building. I was really excited, like a 6 year old going into willy wonka's chococlate factory excited.


We walk out of the elevator and on to the 10th Floor of the building to see a small masthead with the word "Facebook" on it. Double clear doors lead us to the front security desk. We sign a form, get printed out name tags and walk through another clear door an into a strange land where facebook is made...sort of.

When you walk in that clear door, you are in the dining area. There is a buffet style eatery with sensible options for lunch. I'll get back to that...

Our host takes us on a tour, I couldn't really hear what she was saying as she was talking quitely. The office takes up an entire floor (and their expanding to the floor up). The space is basically a big room with desks with Dell monitors. The employees, when hired, get to pick whether they want a PC or  Mac. And they get their personal laptop as well as their desktop. So theres lines of computers for each segment. User Operations has one of the bigger rooms as there are more of those employees. Advertising and sales share a shmedium room --and when I say room i mean like open area type thing. Idk how to describe it but yeah...

I want to add that a guy had 5 Yuelglings next to him while working...And there was a keg-erator with a keg tapped.

We got to eat lunch at Facebook. It was very strange and there was a kid-like atmosphere in the cafeteria dining area which i described earlier. It seemed that the employees tend to make "clicks".
Lunch was great. Fresh food, many options, overall satisfactory.

I made a turkey with cheddar sandwhich and had peas and carrots as a side. We got fondu for dessert with fruit, marshmallows, and bunt cake. The FB employees really have it good there.

It was funny to see the choices made by the employees. They all ate relatively healthy. I feel there must be some pressure to look good as everyone is young. 20's 30's in this office. Austin is also one of those places where the organic, hippy, recycle, vegan, thing is huge and influential. Despite the associated phrase "everything's bigger in Texas", the people in Austin were quite the contradictory.


We drove to Houston towards the end of the afternoon, which was a really quick drive. Got there, checked into the hotel, and chilled for a little. We went down to the concierge to ask where a good place was to go for steaks. He recommended a few places. We decided on this place called Saltgrass which looked to be in our price range.  It turned out to be kind of divey place, but the food was really good.

We got steaks like planned which were so amazingly amazing. The portions were huge, so we both had a lot of leftovers. Our meals consisted of fresh bread, potato soup, steak, and a side. The price was really good for the amount of food we got.



After dinner, we went back to the hotel. There wasn't much to do or see in Houston. It just seemed like a place with all mega highways that looped up and over each other. Houston is another city where most people commute to the downtown for work. We were pretty exhausted from the heat and walking around Austin all day. Getting to sleep early was a great plan since we were excited to go to New Orleans.

Mees