Bellville

That's where we drove today for lunch...... to the little town of Bellville. I thought we'd be staying home today because of this morning's wind and pouring rain. But that didn't last too long, and we were left with just a drizzly day, so off we went. We had been to Bellville before, in the Spring of last year when we were driving around the Hill Country looking for old houses that had charm and character along with the modern conveniences.

Our destination today was a cafe called "Big Hats, Little Whispers." Such cute and quaint names for the little cafes in these tiny Hill Country towns. This particular cafe was originally a newspaper printing place, built in the late 1800s. Both the flooring and the walls were wide planks of the building's original wood. The cafe is known for home made breads, soups, and desserts. We each had a cup of soup and half a sandwich, then split a slice of strawberry-pineapple cake for dessert. Because of the rain, my husband and I were the only two people in the cafe, so the three ladies working there had our plates ready before my husband could put his wallet back into his pocket.

After lunch, we walked a little bit past the cafe, looking into shop windows-- the buildings in the town square (actually a wide circle, really) are very old, very vintage, and mostly all of them have wide awnings that cover most of the sidewalks.... a good way to stay dry on a drippy day. The shops close to the cafe were mostly gift shops, filled with new items probably bought at the wholesale markets up in Dallas or back in Houston. Those kinds of shops are usually so filled with potpourri that you can't hardly breathe, so we tend not to go into those. (Unless, of course, I see something in the window that is screaming out my name.)

There is a "Jail Museum" in Bellville.... and the building itself looks like a castle, or a fort. Must have been the town's original police department and jail. They didn't look like they were open, and we didn't stop because just the outside of the building was interesting enough..... neither one of us wanted to see the inside of the centuries-old jail. This fortress of a building was built up on a high point of the town, so the building was towering over most of the other buildings on the nearby streets... very impressive and intimidating, and most definitely jail-like.

We got into the car and drove around the main streets of the town, and found an antique/consignment shop called "Nothing Ordinary." I knew from looking at the displays in the front windows that it would be our kind of shop, so I told my husband to turn around and go back and park. The building itself was huge.... almost 8,000 square feet of space that used to be an automobile dealership in the early 1900s. And the shop..... filled with little rooms, big rooms, all sorts of nooks and crannies, each with wonderful displays of everything from salt and pepper shakers to vintage sets of china, from tiny stools to huge Victorian parlor sets, from books to clocks to tapestries and hand-hooked rugs. And vintage clothing, jewelry, hand-made boots and hats..... just about anything and everything you can think of, collected from all over the US and from the European flea markets. Nothing Ordinary about it, hence the name.

We walked around for over an hour...... I found lots of stuff that I liked, a few things that I loved, but my rule here--- one thing in, one thing out...... there's not a piece of furniture here that I would part with, so everything there stayed there. My rule does not apply to books, however, and I found a beautiful leather-bound book....... "A King's Story: The Memoirs of The Duke of Windsor," a vintage 1951 copy, printed in Great Britain. It was a steal at just $5, so that book came home with me. (Another book added to the "to be read" pile that seems to have a life of its own.

Still raining outside...... a drizzly warm drippy rain, which could have been a lot worse if the winds from this morning had kept up. We were under a tornado watch earlier today, but that didn't last long. They always give us tornado warnings..... I wonder if anyone takes them seriously anymore. You've heard of the little boy who cried wolf.... we have in this state the weathermen who cried tornado.