Austin Texas

Yet another short train run, so short I went to bed not moving and woke up not moving somewhere else. Feel a bit cheated on the whole train run thing at the moment. Though I'm sure the 3 day one that is next week should make up for it.

I felt quite at home in Austin and then found out its slogan was 'Keep Austin Weird', and even though it is what some would call alternative I feel it looses something when you are trying to hard. Though I suppose I did quite like the weirdness. The main 'weirdness' for want of a better word was 6th Street. Though as usual it was mainly bars and restaurants with the odd tattoo place thrown in for good measure and a few gift shops.





There was also Museum of the Weird that was pretty small but also pretty cheap so worth the admission price. There were too many mummies in there for Willows liking though.



Very close to the Arena was the State Capitol. I didn't manage to go in but did have a nice wander around the gardens.




The Texas Capitol Visitors Center was quite nice and in the grounds of the capitol. There is a little museum and a few interactive exhibits and it is free.



St Mary's Cathedral was not far from here which was a nice Gothic looking building.



One of the things I was really looking forward to here were the Congress Avenue Bats. It is one of the largest urban bat colony in North America. We headed down early prepared for a wait, Willow even dressed in her bat outfit. We waited and we waited and a few bats came out then quite a few and they fluttered out here and there and yes there were a lot of bats. More than I have ever seen in my life but all the same I was disappointed there wasn't a whoosh of bats as there are on some nights. Apparently we can blame the fact they have young with them at the moment.

For a while I have wanted a bat tattoo and thought because of the bat bridge this would be a good place to get it done. I even found a great place to get it done, True Blue Tattoo shop. But alas it is one of the things now on the 'I wish I had done that' list.



Between the arena and 6th Street there were a couple of parks you could wander through, rather than take the street. They were quite nice and we found a turtle that decided to follow us.

A few people from the show including Tweedy but not me, went to Esters Follies. A comedy magic troupe who are apparently really good. Definitely worth a visit if you are in Austin any time.

There were quite a lot of things I wanted to do here but didn't. Once again the heat was a killer and made doing anything out side pretty much impossible. One of things I didn't do that I wanted to while here was Guinness flavoured ice cream from Amy's ice cream shop.