Despite the fact that Austin is the capital of Texas, the city is filled with young people from University of Texas, and high-tech companies. It is also the home town for Lance Armstrong, an elite athlete / cyclist. Not sure if this is the reason, I found there are many road bikes on the street.
The weather in the third week of July during my visit isn’t typical for Austin, as the hurricane Claudette passed through the South Texas region; it brought some strong wind and heavy rain to Austin.
Kevin had organised many actives for me to see his town and meet his friends in the evening. During the day, I was very lucky to have Kevin’s friend, Thao, to show me around. Thao gave me a brief introduction of Austin showing me its natural side of beauty: the hills, trees, and lakes; and a girl adventure: shopping at a huge outlet mall in San Marco. I really enjoyed the ride seeing the northern part of Austin with wide and open road / highway on the hills with spectacular views looking down to lakes, and looking though layers of hills covered with dark green trees. Residences in Austin seem to care a lot about preserving the woods. In many residential areas, from far away, trees are blend well in with the houses. It is a lot more beautiful than seeing a hill got shaved with packed houses.
Food in Austin is an experience for me. Starting with something not entirely Texas (I think?!..maybe the food was inspired from Philadelphian judging from the name of the restaurant) and very delicious is cheesesteak from Texadelphia…..to very Texas, BBQ food. Kevin took me to the two best BBQ restaurants in Austin: Salt Lick and Rudy’s. The Salt Lick that we visited is at a ranch. Rudy’s is at a gas station. Both restaurants use big picnic tables with benches, which to me is a unique experience. Their BBQ food is the best I have tasted so far. Another unique experience is having dinner at a movie theatre, Alamo Drafthouse. The choice of our movie that night was 28 Days Later…(Personally, I don’t think it is a very good choice of movie when I want to keep my appetite during the movie….it ended up, I didn’t finish my meal, and what a shame….the food was actually pretty good) For my sweet tooth, there is Amy’s ice-cream. I heard they do tricks with the ice-cream…like the movie Cocktail (1988, Tom Cruise), but with ice-cream….of course. Although I didn’t have the ultimate experience with their tricks, I had a good Belgian chocolate ice-cream with strawberries crush’ns (the scooper manually crush the ice-cream and the strawberries right in front of you, and the taste….yum b=) Further more with my sweet tooth tour; Kevin took me to Mozart’s Coffee Roasters, where he spent a lot of his time. This coffee / dessert place is truly special. Not only they offer the best coffee and cheesecake in the city or maybe in the state, which was mentioned in many websites and magazines’ article, and free wireless internet access (I can see why Kevin is there all the time), but the location of it is just superior. It is right beside Lake Austin. You have a choice to sit at their outdoor patio (if you enjoy the breeze from the lake, sitting under a tree shade, seeing some water sport activities….) or indoor patio (you will still enjoy the same scenery, but if you would fancy air conditioning…). To make this place more attractive, they have live music almost every evening (except Tuesday and Wednesday). This restaurant has truly fulfilled the five senses (smell: coffee, taste: cheesecake, sight: lake view, hearing: live music, touch: typing on your laptop surfing on the internet).
Another famous scene in downtown Austin, besides the Capital, is the Congress Avenue Bridge Bat Flight happening at the sun set. July and August are the best month to see bat. But with the hurricane affected the weather, the bat didn’t fly out from the bridge until the sky was dark. I could still see them, but no picture was taken.
Austin in many ways fit into the stereo type of Texas but only hipper and younger. They have big lands with many highways named by numbers; pick-up trucks; cowboy hats (well…it was actually not too many that I saw). In general, I like the city mostly for its natural landscape.
*hook’em horns - University of Texas’ motto