We left the Mudbug Festival and our crawfish behind, and traded Louisianan's gumbo and jambalaya in for Texas' BBQ, tumbleweed, and cowboys. With only a few days in Austin before Bryce flew home, we had a jam packed time!
Before even arriving in the city, we caught an AAA baseball game, our "local" Round Rock Express team. The stadium was great, Bryce taught us how to fill out our score cards properly, and all in all it was a great start.
The Round Rock stadium
Enjoying the game
From the game, we got ourselves checked into our city campground and hit the road for our first Texan experience. Food. Our time in Austin consisted of a few main themes:
1. Food. Mainly BBQ.
2. Live music
3. Watching movies
Unfortunately, the only pictures we took centred around food, which to our defense, was a definite highlight.
Franklin's BBQ...a top rated joint. You have to be there well before noon to get any food at all--they are so popular the door shuts when food sells out
My lunch sandwich at Franklin's...beef brisket with coleslaw. Now can you see why it sells out?
Quite the spread of food at Salt Lick..coleslaw, beans, potatoes, beef brisket, sausage, pork ribs, and chicken. Phew!
Salt Lick BBQ...pure mass of pure deliciousness!
Topic #2, live music. Austin is known for an eclectic mix on the live music scene. Everything from country to rock to jazz to blues to reggae can be found among the numerous bar filled streets. This is one of the reasons Austin beat Vancouver on our personal list of "coolest cities to live". We had a good night out which finished with a rather late night at a bar that was just hopping. Hopping past the point of any bar I was in during Florida's spring break madness when Kuldeep and I were there in university. That says something.
Of course we also took in all of Austin's culture. The State Capitol was lovely, and the tour inside was awesome. We took in a big state museum which was fantastic and learned all about Texas' cowboy history.
Bryce and I lovin' the Capitol building
Topic #3, movies. Bryce follows a couple movie blogs and had heard about the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. AWESOME! It serves dinner and drinks during the movie...and really good dinner to boot. There was the biggest, best movie seats you can imagine with a long table in front, and the servers were dressed all in black so as to not be disruptive during the film. You would write your order down and place it upright in a little holder so that they could come collect it. Nothing better than sitting back watching The Bridesmaids (we loved it--go see it!) and having a watermelon-seared feta salad with a glass of white wine....movie and dinner for $20.
The final highlight of Austin was it's great active/healthy living feel. The home of Lance Armstrong (and we checked out Mellow Johnny's, his bike shop) the city is chalk-a-block full of great cycling and running trails, people out everyday, all day working out. We managed to get out for three or four runs along the river trails through the downtown core, followed by a dip in Barton Springs pool. A seriously great lifestyle.
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