Marfa is about 3 hours from Midland and there are several routes to get down there. We chose to follow Google Maps which lately has been sending us on some weird routes - definitely need to go back to paper maps for things like long distance trips. Anyway, we elected to drive a route that would take us through the mountains towards Alpine then cut across the 30 miles to Marfa.
I had looked on VRBO.com on the recommendation of a coworker. He had just gone down to Marfa for the Viva Big Bend Music Festival and their group rented a house using VRBO. I ended up booking the Marfa Boarding House Casita. Other than that, I really didn't look up anything about Marfa. Usually I like to scour TripAdvisor and see reviews so we at least have an idea of something to do but not this time. One thing about Marfa is that there are only 3 "real" hotels and I was looking for something more private and relaxing so I thought the casita would be a good thing to try.
I kept harping about how excited I was about the casita because the owners said the big house was not occupied so we would have the grounds to ourself. I kept going on and on about "Don't forget your swimsuit!" because there was a pool. Imagine my shock when we got there....and there's no pool. There are not a ton of rentals to choose from in Marfa that are small - I kept going back to this huge house that was $2,500/night and it had a gorgeous pool. It would be awesome for a family trip but obviously out of the question for us. I stumbled upon the casita and for whatever reason I was totally convinced it was on the same property as the big house. Vacation FAIL. Oh well! We don't really get in the water that much so it was okay.
The casita was actually really nice. It is a house that was built in the 1910/1920s and the casita was an old storage house for coal. It was a perfect size and clean...it looked exactly like the photos other than some tired aspects that don't photograph (or are photoshopped?) The biggest issue is that there is no central AC...they have two window units that wheel around and pipe hot air out a window vent. The bathroom also does not have an AC unit and the vent tubing is short enough on the wheelie AC that you can't get the air flowing into the bathroom (it was decently hot). They work fine but they are EXTREMELY loud and it was actually the worst part of the trip having to listen to them. It wasn't cold enough to open the windows and the one night we tried for 15 minutes it was bug central. It was also raining off and on all weekend.
We got to Marfa about 8pm and we were warned that they roll up the red carpet pretty early...which is very true. I guess I expected Marfa to be this cool little hip town that people are renovating/revitalizing that has some galleries, shops and restaurants - enough that you could stay all weekend and not leave. Well...Marfa surprised me a little. It is a very small town and it looks like it's falling apart. Mechanic shops have been repurposed into restaurants and you honestly can't tell where anything is because every building looks like it's shut in or vacant. There are also no street signs. It was kind of weird but we settled on dinner at Maiyas because it looked like the only place open. Maiyas is...Italian? The menu is small but they offered a lot of pasta dishes so it could be considered Italian. We enjoyed our meal and were happy to eat some dinner - their chocolate torte was absolutely amazing but the best part was the ice cream. They carry Jeni's ice cream in sea salt caramel and we probably could have eaten a bowl each all by ourselves instead of the tiny scoop we got with our torte. It was awesome. You can actually order the ice cream online for $12/pint. Expensive yes but they offer flat rate shipping so stuff that online cart full of goodies and eat until you pass out from happiness!
We went back to the casita and learned about the train. Marfa was originally established as a point for the railroads...and the railroad runs straight through town. They fly through at about 60mph and blow that horn as loud as possible. One thing I have been very aware of is how often trains come through out here in West Texas. It is actually neat to see but I think there are 5 or 6 trains a night that run through town and you hear this rumbling before you see them. Our casita was on the western outskirts of town so we knew when the trains were on their way!
Next up...Part 2 (aka Day 2)
No comments:
Post a Comment