A weekend in Austin

This past weekend, I drove about three hours south of Dallas to Austin, Texas to visit my friend, Kristin. She went to school in Madison and wants to be a Veterinarian. It is complete coincidence that we are both in Texas. She got a summer job on a deer ranch outside of Austin where she feeds baby deer throughout the day.

I arrived in Austin at 11:30 on Saturday. The first thing we did was get some lunch on Sixth Street. I had an eggplant sandwich that was dripping with grease and mayo, Kristin had a huge 1/2 pound burger, and Kristin's friend, David, had a chicken sandwich. After our fattening lunch, we went to sweat it out by walking around Austin in 98 degree weather. Our first stop was the state capital building. It was a nice break with air conditioning.

Next, we walked around the University of Texas (Texas Longhorns) campus and football stadium. It currently holds the largest enrollment of all colleges in the state of Texas and is fifth largest in the United States, with 51,000 undergraduate and graduate students. (The University of Wisconsin has about 42,000 students).

After our walk around town we went to The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, a cool movie theater that serves dinner and drinks while you watch the movie. We saw Dinner for Schmucks. It was a nice break from the hot sun and very funny! We all got a milkshake and shared some popcorn.

We went back to the hotel to get ready for the bat colony and for the night out. Every night crowds gather on and around Congress Avenue bridge in Austin to watch 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats (the world's largest urban bat colony) emerge from the bridge at dusk to go out mosquito hunting for the night. Unfortunately, it must have been a weird night for the bats because it was too dark to see the huge swarm of them. We were right above the bats on the bridge and could see them swooping out for bugs and hear them squeaking-kinda freaky! (The bat picture is one I found on the internet-what it is suppose to look like-very cool!) There is a picture of us waiting to see the bats on the bridge, the crowd of people waiting on the lawn, and the city of Austin).

After all that waiting for the bats we were pretty thirsty so we walked to Sixth Street where the street is lined with bars, restaurants, and night clubs. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights the street is blocked off from traffic to allow pedestrians to walk across the street from bar to bar. Austin is known as The Live Music Capital of the World. Many of the bars have live bands for entertainment, however, on Saturday there were more DJs. On the picture to the left we are sitting on a Jackelope at The Jackelope bar. Sometime during the evening Kristin and I swapped boots.

Although it only took me three hours to get to Austin, it took a little over five hours to get back to Dallas. Either everyone was traveling from weekend getaways like me or they were going to football partys for the Dallas Cowboys' first game. Lesson learned...stay of Texas roads on Sundays! People are crazy. They drive through the grass to get to side roads!