As I have already noted, the main reason we were in Austin was to catch up with Jett’s nephews and nieces. But Austin is also one of my bucket list cities – a place that has always interested me but I have never had a reason to come here. So I was also looking forward to a day in which we could wander around the city a bit. That day was yesterday.
We began by heading toward downtown Austin with the intention of exploring the “SoCo” (for “south of Congress”) area, which is apparently an artsy-fartsy section of town. I’m not sure we ever got there. Finding any area south of Congress proved to be problematic as Congress runs north/south. We found some on-street parking not far from the capitol building and wandered that area for an hour. It was mostly uninteresting, being home to lots of large banks. There was, however, one stunningly beautiful office building which we found was the home of the Texas Schoolteacher’s Association.
Texas Schoolteacher’s Association office
We made it as far as the state capitol but did not have enough time on the meter to go inside. That is because we had dawdled at a bakery that served some interesting concoctions including a variety of macarons (no, not macaroons), which are French pastry cookies, and lavender lemonade. I was under the impression that lavender was to be smelled, not tasted. I even had some vague recollection that it was toxic. So naturally I had to try it.
Delicious.
Texas state capitol
On the way back to the truck we passed the governor’s mansion, home to Rick Perry, the man who Texans elected to lead them to prove, it seems, that George W. Bush was not, in fact, their dumbest governor ever.
Casa de Perry
Still in search of the elusive SoCo, we moved the truck to the east side of downtown and found the funky 6th St area. This is primarily a street of nightclubs that were dark and quiet at noon, but there were enough restaurants and head shops (no, I didn’t get a crack pipe, but I could have) to keep things interesting. I learned later that this area goes nuts on weekends, particularly when there is a home University of Texas football game.
Sixth St
Sixth St bar
We had lunch at the Driskill Hotel, another stunningly beautiful building in downtown Austin. It has a great lobby and upper lobby bar. It is one of the most interesting hotels I have ever seen.
The Driskill Hotel
Jett in the Driskill lobby
The upper lobby bar
I had a Pretzel Pig sandwich for lunch – slices of pork tenderloin on a bun made of pretzel dough, with a spicy BBQ sauce and cole slaw topping, with a side of home-made kettle chips, washed down with a local microbrew’s Octoberfest.
Pretzel Pig
That was one fine lunch.
We topped off our afternoon by finding the 360 bridge. This is a fairly new bridge northwest of downtown that is nice, but it is no Zakim. We were more impressed by the views we got as we approached it from the east side of the Colorado River (no, not THAT Colorado River, silly).
Jett catching the view
The Colorado River from above
The 360 bridge
We had another family dinner last night, but this one was at Trudy’s, an Austin Tex-Mex institution, to give Nick and Mark a night off from serving others. It was very good, but the best part of the evening was just catching up with everyone.
Trudy’s
Our home for the last three nights has been the Austin Lone Star RV Resort, conveniently located just 5 miles from Cafe Malta and less than 10 miles from downtown Austin. We liked the park. It was clean, well-maintained, had a nice dog park and a nice pool (which we actually used). It was 100% occupied on Saturday and seemed about 80% occupied last night, so it is popular. My only complaint is that the pull-thrus were small. I had a hard time squeezing the truck onto the site.
Next stop: San Antonio. We plan to stop along the way to see if we can get the troublesome #2 slide cable fixed. It is fraying and may pop any minute.
It’s always something…