...Oh yes, Texas. A little note on Texas is in order here, I think. The guidebook tells me that Texas is just under 262,000 square miles, or larger than Germany and Poland combined. And it surely is a force to be reckoned with. Everywhere you go in Texas there is the feeling that everyone is inwardly (if not outwardly) going "WHOO TEXAS! YEAH!". Or, "yee-aah," as Texans add extra syllables into many words: Car = Caw-uh, All right = Aaall raa-yit, etc. Everywhere there are Texan flags, images of Texas, Lone Star and Longhorn memorabilia, etc. I really liked it because I felt like many of the places we'd been didn't really give us a sense of where we were, if that makes sense. Obviously NYC is totally unique and you could never mistake it for anywhere else. But Cincinnati could have been anywhere. If we hadn't been to the Missouri Botanical Gardens while visiting St Louis, you could be forgiven for not knowing what state it was in. But most of Texas was is so very decidedly Texan that you'd have trouble mistaking where you are, even way south near Mexico. So I really enjoyed the character and identity of Texas throughout, which, I can tell you, was a pretty long throughout: we spent about a week and a half in Texas, and countless hours on trains going past mountains and through deserts baking in the sun.
We both really liked Austin, though it was SO HOT. You'd walk three blocks then want to sit down with a nice cold drink. We stayed in the Austin Motel, which was a very lovely place. Our train was super-delayed from Dallas and when we got to Austin late at night, some nice people on the train offered us a ride to the motel rather than us having to get a taxi, as the motel was only about 10 minutes' drive from the station and vaguely in their direction. So we were off to a good start. On our first day there (Tueday 26th Aug) we wandered around downtown and visited the Mexic-Arte museum, then went back to SoCo where the motel was to see the quirky shops there. After dinner we headed back to 6th Ave to take in the nightlife. Austin is renowned for its live music scene, and we weren't disappointed (well, with free live music almost everywhere and $2 beers, who would be?). As we went out quite early, many of the bars were pretty empty but it gave a nice intimate feel - in the second one we went to, the guy playing had a break in the middle of his set and went and talked to everyone in the bar (we had a conversation about jeans and he told Oz that he liked his style). We met a bunch of guys also staying in the Austin Motel who were from London and were there because one of them was getting married, so we talked to them about Austin and things to do here. Then we went to the Coyote Ugly bar where the bartenders were dancing on the bar and it was just a bit odd so we left soon afterwards and walked back to the motel.
The next day we got up late and had some brunch in a Mexican cafe that was practically next door to the motel. I had a tasty omelette served with fruit, which was just what I needed! Then we found a bus to take us to Zilker Park, Austin's favoured open space. There's a pool there fed by spring water so is a constant 68F (20C) all year round and a place to rent canoes. So we spent a nice afternoon paddling down the creek then up and down a little bit of the river. I really liked the creek because there were wild turtles everywhere (I think we hit one or two unlucky ones that didn't move out of our way quick enough...) and fish and big trees sticking out of the water that you could go underneath and paddle around. It was very peaceful and lovely. It wasn't too deep and you could see all the plants growing on the bottom. Afterwards we went for a little paddle in the spring water, which was SO COLD. So we didn't stay too long. We decided to go and look around the botanical garden instead. We saw most of it - it was divided into different bits like the cactus garden, the butterfly garden and the Japanese garden, which was the best. It had been built/donated by a Japanese man and it was very beautifully designed with waterfalls and a little bridge and trees. After wandering around for a while we were pretty hot and tired so we headed back to the motel and got some microwave burritos for our dinner (which sound disgusting but they were from this little organic supermarket place so they weren't full of rubbish and were actually pretty decent, especially for under $3!). We also had a swim in the pool, which being outdoors in Texas was lovely and warm. Then we went to see the big evening event in Austin, which is the bats coming out from under the bridge. The bridge has a colony of 1.5 million bats living there. They come up from Mexico to have their babies, and after sunset they all stream out to go and find their insect dinners. In the day you can hear them all chittering in there but you can't see them. It was pretty impressive to see them all coming out but they smelt pretty bad!
On our last day in Austin we went up to see the University of Texas campus, which was rather nice, and it felt good to be surrounded by students again! We didn't have too much else to do, but as we'd checked out of the motel we had to kill time until our train, so we headed back downtown and went to the Museum of the Weird on 6th Ave, which we'd noticed before. It was incredibly cheesy but pretty awesome, worth the entrance fee anyway! It was like an old-time dime museum, with shrunken heads, a two-headed calf, a supposed Fiji mermaid, and a Mummy. We'd called the Amtrak hotline beforehand and discovered our train was delayed, so as we still had a few hours to kill we decided to see a film. The only thing showing was Tropic Thunder, which turned out to be ok. But the cinema itself was worth seeing. In front of each row of seats was a long table, and each seat had a menu in front of it so you could order food by writing down your order then clipping it into the stand in front of you. Then someone would come and get your order and bring your food and bill. Of course, being a cinema it wasn't exactly cheap, but they gave you a decent-sized serving and it was pretty tasty. When the film ended it was time to head to the station. Annoyingly our train was even more delayed so we had to wait there for a couple of hours. While I liked Texas itself, the Texas Eagle was most definitely not my favourite train!
The bats. They were hard to take photos of as it was completely dark and they were moving so fast, but this will hopefully give you some idea.
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