It's 7:15 and I have been up since the breakfast area of our Holiday Inn Express opened at 6:30, a busy place. We are going to spend the morning and part of the afternoon here in Austin, the morning at the LBJ Library on the Texas campus, then around the University of Texas campus and lunch, then on to College Station, home of Texas A & M and the George Bush Sr Library, about two hours from Austin.
We had a long coffee hour and breakfast yesterday, Wednesday, in no hurry to get started, just take it easy, very difficult for yours truly. Around 10:30, we started out for the Texas State Capitol. Well, I am losing my map reading skills (GPS's fault) and we found ourselves on 2nd rather than the Capitol. So we had a coffee at the hip coffee shop, Austin Java, did some browsing as we walked back towards the Capitol on Congress Street.
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| Traffic Light For Bikes (only in Austin) |
We got a coffee, walked some of the streets, not very interesting on our way to the Capitol, which was really worth the visit.
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| The Capitol Of The State Of Texas |
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| Impressive |
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| Presiding |
It's impressive inside as well as out, still in use and open to visitors most days. We did have to go through security; I guess we can't carry in the Capitol. We ogled the marvelous dome, the seal of Texas in marble on the floor and visited both the House and Senate meeting rooms, with portraits of previous leaders. We spent a good hour walking and looking. It was enough.
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| Dome |
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| Marble Floor With Seal Of Texas |
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| Portrait Of Former Governor Ann Richards |
We then walked home, past numerous homeless both on the streets and at the shelters. Really sad to see. We were not sure where to eat so we walked down the street to our hotel and found Pelons, a Tex/Mex restaurant. It had a few patrons, not much ambiance but we really liked our carnitas, soft tacos with pulled pork, pickled cabbage, a poblano cream sauce and Monterey jack cheese. And of course, we split a Lone Star brew, a sure-fire soporific.
We got back to our room about 1:30, ready to relax for a couple of hours and I was ready for a brief nap. It's nice to have a comfortable place to go when you are tired out from a morning of being a tourist in a strange land. Around 3:00, we got our car and drove a couple of miles, across the Colorado River and the Anne Richards Bridge to a hip area called SoCo. It's really just the continuation of Congress Street, thus South Congress. We had a little problem parking as I pulled into a strange parking space head first whereas everyone else was the opposite. So I pulled a backward U-turn and parked correctly. Another example of my being an idiot.
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| SoCo Taco And Smoothie Joint |
SoCo was obviously once a low rent area, drawing lots of business but no more. Every store we looked in was high end although there were a couple of tee shirt shops and mercantile stores with affordable trinkets. There were lots of restaurants and food trucks, as well as coffee shops, smoothie shops and a couple of upscale hotels. To be honest, we were not overly impressed, perhaps because we were tired of walking the streets looking at stores, restaurants, and bars. The one store we liked, Stag Provisions, was also priced out of our budget. We need nature, some woods and trees, not cement and high rises. I guess we are in the wrong place. We drove home just as traffic was picking up but managed to get back by 4:30.
Our grandson, Mitchel, texted us around 6:00, to say he was finished with his exam, was going back to his room to shower and then would text us when he was on his way to meet us at our Holiday Inn. What a good boy. And like a typical college student, he Ubered to the wrong hotel, so we met him at the busy corner of 6th and Neches. It was great to see him and we walked to the Rainey Street district of Austin, an area of 1950's bungalows, renovated and turned into cool restaurants and bars. And when in Austin, TX, where else do you eat and drink but at Banger's Sausage House and Beer Garden. With various sausages, sides like German potato salad or jalapeno and bacon mac n cheese, how could we go wrong. Add perhaps 120 beers, at least 50 on tap and you can see why this German beer garden is very popular.
Evie had the typical bratwurst with sauerkraut and I went rogue, having a South Texas antelope sausage called a merguez, topped with baba ganoush, honey sesame yogurt, feta cheese, and mint. We sat outside under the lights at picnic tables and enjoyed our meals as we caught up on Mitchell's life, his academic interests, and his classes. He's so serious, motivated and driven in his academics that it's hard to believe he is my grandson. He hopes to graduate with a major in Architectural Engineering, certificates in Business and Design Strategies. It was fun to talk with him, to see some of his engineering work, a house he built for a class out of wood. This summer he will spend nine weeks in Barcelona, where he will work in the morning with an architecture firm and go to classes in the afternoon. We walked back to our hotel at 9:00, set up a time to meet tomorrow after his classes before he Ubered back to his apartment, the end of a full day in Austin.
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| Dinner With Our Grandson |
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