Austin

(All photos for this entry are posted here)

Anna was in Austin last week for business, I tagged along for the weekend to check out the city. I have heard a lot about Austin, but this was my first time visiting the city. We stayed at the fabulous Austin Motel on South Congress. Cheap, stylish (in a mid century way), friendly, and well located. What more could you ask for?

Austin is a curious city to me. It is an odd mix; artsy-hippy-nuevo with a dash of proud-texan. The sort of place where you can order collard greens and brisket, omelets with velveeta cheese, or vegetarian chorizo tacos to go with your kombucha. For a smaller city (800k?), Austin has a lot going on, and a lively night scene.

Our fist foray into the city we decided to try Cuba Libre. Upon walking in, I was told to remove my hat. This seemed a bit odd for a city that was so casual, but it was fine with me. However, the dress code seemed silly when our too-cool-for-school server played with a toothpick hanging from his mouth the entire time we were there. Classy and hygienic. We should have taken that as an omen. The food was, in a word, horrible. I could only manage a few bites of my meal before pushing it aside. I wouldn’t return if you paid me.

Not a great start. Luckily Cesar had some great recommendations. After some tea at Halcyon (I wish more places would do coffee house bars), and some great beer at The Gingerman, we had completely forgotten the earlier experience.

Of course, we hit up the usual suspects in Austin – The Alamo Draft House, live music, and BBQ. I wish we had a Draft House in San Diego. What a fantastic way to enjoy a movie, we ended up staying for two. There was a folk music convention going on in the city, so we caught some live music put on by some of the attendees. Good stuff. COTR were a lot of fun, a nice mix of musical styles. As for the BBQ, we got our fix at Stubbs, great food.

We spent a good bit of time wandering and people watching around the city. Austin is a cafe kind of town, and fairly walk-able if you stick to the downtown core and area. Outside those parts it does seem to be more of a car city. It was really nice to walk around the river, they have some well done trails. We definitely need to come back when it is warm enough to visit the swimming holes and see the bats.

PS – By my extremely scientific observations of the Dallas airport, I believe Texas has 85% of the world’s supply of chunky gold nugget jewelry. What’s up with that?

I have some Austin photos I want to publish, but I am busy fighting with Gallery 2 and importing the old albums onto the new site. Stay tuned..