Austin

Mark was in Austin for most of the week at a conference for work, so I joined him (via a quick Greyhound trip) for the weekend. Great city! Lots of interesting and unique shops and restaurants. I can see why their moto is "Keep Austin Weird".

Saturday, we started the day with hands down one of the best breakfasts I've ever had at "Juan In a Million" (from Man vs. Food fame.) We then wandered around the University of Texas's campus and saw its HUGE stadium (college football is really big in the south) and then we walked over to the capitol building. I will fully admit that I had no idea that Austin was even the capital of Texas. :-) Mark is quite the beer connoisseur so we next drove out to what felt like the absolute middle of nowhere to go on a tour of a brewery he had found online, Jester King. Afterwards, we went to a little town outside of Austin called Lockhart, the Texas capital of BBQ, and did a BBQ crawl of two of the most popular restaurants. It was good but I think I prefer BBQ completely drowned in sauce and these places forbid sauce altogether.

Our Saturday night was pretty fun. We were in a bit of a food coma and Mark needed to nap so we went back to the hotel and he ended up sleeping through when we were supposed to go watch the bats. (Every day at sundown, over a million bats fly out from underneath a particular bridge in Austin.) Oh well, all the more reason to go back to Austin! We then met up with a friend who had also moved down from Hoboken and went out on 6th Street, a great area with TONS of unique bars, almost all with live music and no cover. It reminded me of NYC or Hoboken, without the covers and with music. :-) Right off of 6th Street, we even stumbled across a pizza place called "Hoboken Pies"! The owner had moved down from Hoboken too. What a small world!

Sunday we ate breakfast at a lovely crepes place on the first floor of the hotel and then checked out the Pecan Street Festival, where I got really unique wooden earrings. We then said goodbye to Austin but one of the highlights of our weekend actually happened on the drive home. Mark had gotten a tip to check out a Czech bakery at a gas station on the way back. Kolaches seem to be very big down here for some reason, (someone had brought them in to my office so I had seen them before) and this bakery was full of all kinds! Plus tons of other yummy goodness. Apparently this gem was no secret as the line was literally out the door and there were knock off Czech bakeries at the same exit! When it was our turn to order, we got as much as we could and then rushed back to the car to enjoy it. So good!

We hope to make many more trips to Austin to check out all it has to offer, especially to finally see the bats. And I'm sure we will be stopping at the Czech bakery on the way there AND back next time. :-)