Austin is awesome!

April 21-22

Finally we left early for a drive, Austin bound! A long day of driving across west Texas, but we were no longer in the desert, now we were in a plains-state. The scenery was beautiful and there were tons of cows grazing. We stopped once to take our obligatory picture by the Texas state sign, got lost trying to find the hotel, but we finally arrived. We were super tired, but we pushed ourselves to go out and we were so happy that we did! The hotel had a shuttle service that dropped us off on 6^th Street which is where all the night life is. It was so amazing! The city blocks off the street so cars can’t drive down it and people just walk in and out of bars and down the street. There are food carts and other places to eat, everything a drunk person could want!

There are promoters all around like Vegas and we got wrangled into the first bar by the offer of a free drink. We quickly learned why this bar had a promoter; it was empty. We had our drink and left. The second bar we went in to was called The Library and it was pretty cool and way more populated than the first. There was an enormous faux book case behind the bar and an upstairs area with lots of places to sit. We had a couple drinks there and migrated to the next bar that had a deck area outside upstairs. We had a pretty awesome view of all the drunk people stumbling around below. They were mostly college kids but we couldn’t believe all the guys in polos/button downs, khaki shorts and boat shoes. Rommie was upset that there were no cowboys in sight. We hung out there for awhile, talked to some guys, then left because we were really hungry. We stopped at one of the pizza stands on the street and had the best pizza of my life! We then had to find a cab. We wandered around for about half an hour and FINALLY found one. We had to beat some guys out of it, but we finally got a ride back to the hotel.

The next day we slept until 11am, which felt amazing!! We spent the day exploring the city. We had some amazingly delicious bbq at a restaurant called Stubbs. I had a delicious pulled pork bbq sandwich and Roomie had the ribs; both were finger licking good! We asked the waiter what there was to do in Austin, but he wasn’t much help. We did find out that south Congress Street was pretty cool, so we drove down there; it was so hot and humid, we couldn’t bear to walk. It turns out that south Congress is a lot like Berkley in California. There were hipsters walking around everywhere and lots of cute little shops on the streets. Roomie and I got some cold beverages at Jo’s and sat on the patio and people watched.

After a lengthy nap at the hotel we went out again, this time we drove. Our first stop was to get another piece of delicious pizza. The first bar we tried to get into wouldn’t let us in because of our CA ID’s. apparently it’s their “policy” that they don’t allow people with out of state licenses into their “fine” establishment without another piece of ID. Too bad for them because we were ready to give them our money. Instead we went to a place called Maggie Mae’s which had an upper level which was like a regular club with hip hop, but the downstairs had a live band playing. Roomie and I sat down there for most of the night enjoying the music.

We were pretty sad to leave Austin because the city had a really cool vibe. It was really clean and downtown was incredibly easy to navigate. The night life was great and even though there wasn’t much to do in the day, we considered just staying there rather than moving all the way to the East Coast. Responsibility eventually got the better of us and we packed up the car to go. In Dallas, we met one of Roomie’s friends whom she had grown up with. We had a nice lunch in Downtown Dallas (not as awesome as Austin) and I almost got run over by a man in a wheelchair; one of the many “colorful” locals in Dallas. What a way to end our stay in the lively state of Texas!