Austin, part 2

For the second half of our time in Austin, we stayed at a little cottage we found through airbnb.

Photos from/rental information here

It was the first time I've ever used Airbnb, and (once we found the right place) it was great.  If you're ever looking for a place to stay in Austin, I'd highly recommend this little cottage.  It was fun living in a neighborhood and getting a sense of the pulse and daily rhythms of life here; the place was spacious, and bright, and beautifully furnished.  In the mornings I got up before everyone else and sat out on the back patio and ate my local-Texas-dairy yogurt and it was quiet, and very hot, and I wrote and read the book of John and listened to the country music I've been  kind of liking lately; at night, even though it was still hot, we sat out under the Christmas lights (they love them here) and played cards.

Also, we looked up how much a place like this would cost to buy, covered the number before we saw it, lowballed it like crazy and guessed around three hundred thousand dollars, and about died laughing when it turned out to be one-fifty.  WE'RE MOVING TO TEXAS, EVERYONE.

Since we'd been there on a game day and all, and since football apparently holds a crucial role in Texas culture, it seemed like a duty to go see the University of Texas and the stadium.  You can see the stadium from the freeway, and you can see it from space, because it's mindblowingly gigantic.  For having so many students, though, the campus seemed surprisingly small, so we kind of just drove around in circles a little bit and then went into the LBJ Library and Museum for the express purpose of using a bathroom and then ended up getting pulled in by the sweet elderly woman behind the counter.  I'm glad we did; it was one of the better museums I've ever toured.

We wandered a little bit around Old West Austin, where we had some truly terrible coffee but saw a perfectly period-y drugstore where some people happened to filming the opening sequences of a horror film.

We got dinner at the flagship Whole Foods, then took it up to Mount Bonnell to watch the sunset.

It was Date Night Central up there, yo.  Actually, there were also a surprising number of joggers, which weirded me out every time I saw one.  Sure, it wasn't as hot as it was during the heat of the day, but even at sunset it was well over ninety.

Other things that weirded me out about Austin, while we're on the subject: the number of ATMs everywhere (when was the last time you even noticed ATMs?  That's how many there were), how crowded it always was in the strip club parking lots, how everything I ever read about we ended up passing on our way to something else at one point or another (Austin's really small), how it became a hotspot for outdoor music festivals (it's lovely, but so hot) and how, ultimately, it wasn't actually that 'weird' at all despite the slogan.

(Small, right?)

Really though, despite all the KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD stickers everywhere, Austin didn't strike us as remotely, actually weird in any real way aside from all the ATMs.  But I think that's because we're from SF, and are unfazed by things like Whole Foods and recycling and hybrid cars and live music and Democrats.  I bet Austin is pretty weird compared to the rest of Texas.

By the time we were down to one full day left in Texas, it felt like we'd seen all of Austin, and then some, so we took a little jaunt down to San Antonio to see the famed Alamo and Riverwalk.

The Alamo was funny.  By funny I mean not good.

I think if you were obsessed with Texas' history and had done more than, say, Wikipedia the story of the Alamo the night before, it might be a cool place to see so you could get a sense of where things happen.  If you're going expecting to actually get a sense of the history, though, and the story and its importance, then I thought the whole setup was really sub-par.

Guess we should've ponied up the eight bucks or whatever it was they wanted for an audio tour, maybe.

 They did have these huge koi fish, though.  You can't really tell from the picture, but apparently everything really is bigger in Texas.

Anyway, we crossed the street from the Alamo and entered what I think was maybe a place designed by San Antonio city planners who'd been to Disneyland, liked it, and wanted to make it a little more adult: the Riverwalk, which is totally passed off as a thing you really want to make sure not to miss.

 This ice cream cone was four dollars.  That should've been our first clue.

The Riverwalk was ... huh.  The best way I can think to describe it is that it had a Rainforest Cafe, and that there's never in the history of planned malls-made-to-look-like-something-more-exciting-than-a-mall been a more apropos location for a Rainforest Cafe.

To be fair, it's not like we don't have places like this in California--we have Santana Row, and hell, we also have Irvine.  But that's not why we tell people to visit California, and we also don't have a Ripley's Believe It Or Not and a Tomb Rider 3-D across the street from, say, Alcatraz.  Just saying.

Then we drove through a--and I quote--Texas-style safari on our way back!  So random.  But fun.

(A sidenote: when we got back that night I found a tiny little blog post from a summer newspaper intern in Austin saying the Alamo could've been handled much better--which is maybe appropriate given its historical significance, now that I think about it--and that the Riverwalk was boring, dirty, and smelly.

It was kind of an insignificant little corner of the internet, but hoards of people from San Antonio somehow found and descended on the post.  Mostly, people trashed Austin with  'BUT WE HAVE THE SPURS!!!!!!!!!!  THE SPURS YOU GUYS!!'.  My favorite comment, though, in defense of the honor of the Riverwalk, was: "All attractions have unpleasant odors emanating from them from time to time."

Schooled.

And someone else wrote: "At least I'm not from Austin, where you love marijuana more than God."  

Oh Austin.  So weird.)

These fawns look so ... put-upon.

 This guy was actually kind of scary.  Also, you can't really tell from the picture, but he's HUGE.  Way taller than our car.

And finally, we drove around in hunt of places where Friday Night Lights was filmed.  Best thing ever.

Ray's was one, and the people were really friendly, and also, immediately onto us: "Y'all been watching some Friday Night Lights?  We get a lot of people coming in with cameras .... "

This, from Ray's, was ... so totally devoid of any nutritional value, but it was so good.  As was the piece of chocolate cake.  It seems like a good rule of thumb is to get a piece of cake from Texan barbecue joints.

Thanks, Austin.  You were delicious and fun, even if you really weren't all that weird.