Couple of Coffees

Texas, part two

Even though we only had two nights in Texas, that part of our trip feels like it was super sized. So here's the second half.

We spent the Schlitterbahn night in Austin, with tasty food from a local Tex-Mex chain for dinner, then explored Austin all the next day. The morning lead us to the Wheatsville Food Co-op, where a cashier suggested Spider House for coffee and/or evening entertainment. We headed there next, and found smooth espresso drinks with a moist pumpkin muffin. It was hot, but not too bad in the morning yet, so we sat out back on their patio. The business has free movies at night and also is a bar. The atmosphere was what we expected to find in Austin, very cool, unlike any place we've been before, interesting people watching and, of course, great coffee.

Turns out the night we rolled into Austin the first time was on the 40th anniversary of the sniper shootings from the University of Texas at Austin tower on campus. More violent history. We didn't go to see the tower, but it was visible along Guadalupe Street, where we wandered during the afternoon in search of shops with air conditioning and bottles of cold water.

Then we found Book People, my new favorite bookstore, next to Powell's of course, and some of the other top-notch ones we've seen on this trip. The store was huge, with friendly help and tons of well-written, laminated staff recommendations. Some of the writeups featured pictures drawn by the staff members. I spent plenty of time reading those and learning about books I didn't know about before.

After lunch at the flagship Whole Foods in Austin, we browsed at Waterloo, a music store. Book People was named the top bookstore in the U.S. in 2005 by somebody, and Waterloo received a similar top award for its industry. Cool.

I can see why Austin keeps topping lists of places to live. There are lots of restaurants, attractions, museums, a happening night life (although it didn't happen for us!), arts and culture and a sense of intellectualism. Plus it's the state capitol, with a building taller than the U.S. Capitol Building, since everything is bigger in Texas.

Unfortunately, we had to keep moving due to our time schedule, so we left Austin for a night in Fort Worth. We missed seeing the nightly bats that fly from under the Congress Street Bridge at dusk. We'll just have to come back.

We had Riscky's Barbecue in Fort Worth for dinner. The next morning we took off for Oklahoma.

posted by Laura the Writer @ 10:25 PM