As we headed, we took a little detour (more like a couple hour detour when all was said and done) to Driftwood, Texas where Salt Lick Bar-B-Que is located.  Yes, MORE BBQ.  My tummy was not thrilled with me by the end of the trip.  But this was the best place yet!  We totally cheated the system by ordering to go, then eating in their banquet room, skirting the 45 minute wait.  Hey!  We had a busy day ahead of us, no time to dilly dally!  Definitely our favorite BBQ of the trip and worth the detour.

By the time we reached San Antonio we had little time to see all of the sites before they closed.  We brushed up in the car on the “must sees” of San Antonio and did all we could.  First we went to the Mission San Jose, the largest mission in San Antonio, known for the Rose window.  Then we hustled over to The Alamo, the shrine of Texas liberty, which happens to be right smack in the middle of their downtown.  We walked through it and around it until they closed then walked the River Walk to LaVillita and back, in search of something, anything, a la mode.  Alamo…a la mode…it was on the mind.  Sweet success with a giant brownie served with ice creams!  

San Antonio was a really cute city.  I wish we had a little more time to explore the intricacies of their downtown.  I’m glad we went though, even if just for a quick tour. 

Back in Austin we met up with Ambrose for dinner at La Condesa, a yummy Mexican restaurant.  Then we went to The Driskill, Austin’s historic and rumored haunted hotel.  We sipped drinks and swapped stories from our trip.  It was the perfect way to wrap up our mini Texan retreat.  Good times with great friends!

This is who we saw:

Phoenix - Usually what would happen is we’d be driving and a Phoenix song would come on the iPod and one of us would say “Oh, I like this, who is it?”  And it was always Phoenix.  The Frenchies put on a solid show. 

Raphael Saadiq - Kevin loves Raphael Saadiq (from Tony! Toni! Tone!).  This is his favorite song.

K’Naan - I felt really cool because I had heard of K’Naan from Mohamed at work.  Somali born rapper, emigrated to Canada.  Raps about his life growing up.  He really engaged the crowd and was fun to watch. 

John Legend – LOVE him.

Them Crooked Vultures - Dave Grohl’s new band with Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin).

Kings of Leon - SO GOOD!  We’ve wanted to see the Tennessee brothers and cousin for awhile now.  Eddie Vedder came out and closed the show with them, singing Slow Night, So Long.  AWESOME!  *Two very random side notes*  Eddie Vedder is wearing the same shirt he wore the Monday before at the Seattle Pearl Jam concert (also an amazing show).  Later, we accidently ran into one of the fans that caught a tambourine Eddie threw into the crowd.

Another day on our feet, we were pretty beat but we had heard about this free after party at the abandoned, soon to be demolished, Austin Power Plant.  We managed to get wrist bands to get in but quickly found out the party was outside.  Only VIPs were allowed inside the power plant.  Not wanting to kick it with the all ages crowd we left to close out one of the bars on 5th, dancing the night away.

For lunch we went to the famed Stubb’s.  Kevin was drooling over how good his ribs were our entire lunch – so, I guess they beat Iron Works from yesterday.  After lunch, we checked out the Market District, home to the largest Whole Foods (their HQ is in Austin) and Waterloo Records.  We knew we had a big night out in SoCo for First Thursday, so we went back to our hotels and enjoyed the free wine and cheese reception (cheese meaning nacho cheese out of a dispenser – d.lish.) and cooled off in the pool.

On our way to First Thursday, we stopped on Congress Bridge to see if the bats would come out and play.  We could hear them going crazy and saw a few flying around under the bridge but again, no big 1.5 million gush of bats.  Too bad   First Thursday in SoCo was full of energy.  All of the shops stay open late and there are a bunch of mini flea markets up and down the street.  They had creepy Halloween creatures out promoting an event, their Rollergirls were rolling around and there was live music everywhere.  My favorite part - Hey Cupcake!, the cupcake shop in the airstream.  They were good, their schtick was a “Whipper Snapper” where you could choose to get your cupcake injected with whip cream.  Clever.  I didn’t do it, but Kevin did.  We still like Cupcake Royale best!

Anj was able to meet up with us for a late dinner at Guero’s (texmex) then we met some of her co-workers at Malverde.  This place was hotttt.  If you were to do chic northwest *right* - it would look like this bar.  There was a great outdoor patio, hanging plants, a moss wall, wood everywhere – but done up modern.  If in Austin, I recommend!

Day one, we flew out at 6am.  Talk about stupid.  That’s REALLY early when you calculate travel time, being at the airport early, etc.  It did give us most of the day to wander around Austin though.  So far, we’ve been to (the tallest) state capitol building, which seems to be infested by locusts – go figure, Ironworks BBQ, South Congress Street (SoCo), and Amy’s Ice Creams.

Austin is known to have the world’s largest “urban” bat colony.  They live under Congress Bridge and every night at dusk 1.5 MILLION bats fly out from under the bridge to find food.  We waited VERY PATIENTLY for a VERY LONG TIME and did not see 1.5 million bats.  We saw about 20.  Total.  No swarms of bats.  Nothing to wait over an hour for.  We decided that it could be one of two things.  1. LIES!  ALL LIES.  Austin’s way to trick tourists and make fun of the hundreds of people waiting for the bats, or 2. the bats weren’t hungry tonight, but they’ll for sure be out tomorrow.  I’m not sure yet we will be waiting for them…

We don’t really have an agenda for the rest of the week, except ACL on Friday.  Just more exploring and lots and lots of sweating, BBQ and TexMex (not necessarily in that order).

Our hotel is by the Real World Austin pad! It's now a restaurant, just like the Real World Seattle pad.