Trip to Austin, TX
September 28-30, 2018
Once upon a time, my friend Wendy won a trip to Austin via Southwest Airlines, and she invited me to join her in her party of 6. Linda was also able to go, and it just ended up being the 4 of us because of, well, life and stuff. This trip was back in September of last year, so my blog post may not be as detailed as I'd like it to be, but I need to post it for posterity.
The flight to Austin started in Oakland, so we flew from Ontario to Oakland early in the morning. Our ONT flight was at 6:50 a.m., but I had TSA precheck. But then I got randomly searched for my electronics and handed over my phone to be swabbed. Then I spilled syrup on myself while waiting to board. What a morning. The gate at Oakland had some kind of fun box thing for us to stare at, called a Heart Cart. We realized later that the stuff we were looking at was actually from Southwest and their co-sponsor, Deep Eddy Vodka, and that we would get some of it in our swag bags.
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| Contest Winner and our guide |
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| I love the photo bomb |
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| SWAG |
Our plane was made up mostly of contest winners, so they called us up by group. I felt sorry for the other passengers, whom probably didn't want to deal with a bunch of excited contest winners. I don't know how we got in at almost last, but we were happy when our names were finally called. Most of the other passengers sat with each other, but since we were only 4, we split up into pairs. Once we took off, Linda and I promptly made the middle seat between us the snack seat, or as Wendy calls it, "The Bistro." I, of course, ordered a vodka and cranberry cocktail made with Deep Eddy vodka.
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| Austin, here we come! |
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| The Bistro |
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| So cute, so tasty |
Once we arrived in Austin, we boarded a bus to take us to the Fairmont hotel in Austin. Swanky, right?! The lobby was beautiful. The room was beautiful. I wanted to live there...except no free wifi. So I decided to blog about it later...and here I am almost a year from when we left, trying to remember stuff through pictures and my memory.
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| View of hotel pools from our room |
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| View of river from our room |
After taking a look at our beautiful room, Linda and I met up with Weff and had our free cocktails downstairs in the lounge with the other contest winners. Thank you, Deep Eddy! They told us that we could go to the distillery, but we opted out of that tour.
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| Bar Snacks They were too spicy for me, though. |
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| I could not stop staring at this tree in the bar area |
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| Old Fashioned Goodness |
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| Toasting to our contest sponsors |
We needed to eat non-bar snacks, and found that there was a barbecue place across the street from the hotel. We got our food and walked over to State Bridge, because it was my goal to see the bats flying around at dusk. We were going to stand near the riverbank, but decided to sit on the sidewalk of the bridge instead. While we sat there and ate our food, we encountered the Bat Man, whom had a hat with a toy bat on it, and walked around giving out stickers. If they had been free, I might have taken one, but they weren't, so whatever.
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| View from bridge |
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| Waiting for Bats |
The view was very pretty as we watched the sunset and eagerly awaited the colony of bats for which the area is known. We waited a long time. Boats of tourists waited below. They seemed to be pointing at some bats hanging underneath the bridge. Maybe JeffEvs saw one. But no colony flying around making a cloud of bats. I was sad. But you can't force nature to do stuff, so we left, me with my mess of BBQ and sad face, which could only be cheered by...you guessed it...food.
We had checked out one of the restaurants before leaving for dinner, and saw that they had a dessert bar, but when we got there, the bar area wasn't actually the place where customers sit. We sat at a table instead, and ordered yumminess, and I felt a little better.
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| My bananas foster crepe |
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| Linda's Rocky Road ice cream |
The next morning, we decided to go to Snooze AM Eatery for breakfast. It was pouring rain, and we stood outside under umbrellas while we waited. The place is very cute and the design reminded me of jacks. The food was also very good, and I'm happy to say that they have since branched out to California, in Orange County and San Diego.
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| They leave the milk on the table when you order coffee. I'm just saying. |
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| Jack! |
We then waited in the rain again for our next Lyft ride, this time to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library. This is the 5th Presidential Library that I've walked through (I only went to the gift shop at GHW Bush's), and I really enjoy looking at their contributions to our nation. We pretty much had to walk very quickly from a sheltered area to the library, and we were drenched when we arrived. I took off my wet belongings after we paid our entrance fee, and heard a lot of sloshing as everyone walked through the exhibits. The special exhibit was a Sports History exhibit, and we looked through that before going to the actual LBJ portion.
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| LBJ PL |
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| 42 |
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| There's actually a phone in here! |
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| MJ's Shoes |
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| Fellow UCI Alum: Diver Greg Louganis |
The LBJ exhibit is really neat, and I saw a paperweight on Ladybird Johnson's desk that read "Can Do" in English on one side, and in Chinese (Mandarin?) on the other. I liked it so much that I bought a replica of it in the gift shop, along with a couple of other things, like a plush bat.
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| LBJ Presidential Archives |
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| LBJ's Oval Office |
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| Ladybird Johnson's Office |
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| All The Way with LBJ! |
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| It's the tree, but in real life! |
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| We can see it! |
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| Capitol |
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| Using the drinking fountain |
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| Interior top of rotunda |
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| On the State Senate Floor Or the House. I can't remember. |
We thought there was some kind of street festival across the way, but wanted to sit down and enjoy dinner. My friend's daughter lives in the area, and I asked her for recommendations. One of them was Bufalino Pizza, which sounded yummy, so we took a Lyft there. The driver was entertaining, and asked us to entertain him, too, so he gave a karaoke microphone to Linda so she could serenade us as we rode over to the restaurant. I now can't remember what she sang, though.
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| Sing it! Whatever song it is. |
At Bufalino, we ordered a couple of different pizzas, but did not order another patron to knock over our bottle of water with her bigass purse. The water spilled all over the table, knocked over a glass, and got Linda and me nice and wet. Because I hadn't gotten wet enough earlier in the day, I guess. They apologized profusely, and we ended up with complimentary dessert, which was quite tasty, as was the pizza before it got wet. I was not annoyed with the restaurant staff, but was really annoyed at the patron, whom didn't offer to pay for our food, nor did she sound genuinely apologetic. I'm judge-y that way.
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| Avocado Salad |
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| Dessert Trio |
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| Our bill came inside this book |
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| "Pumpkin Spice Brisket is Back JK Drink Tequila" |
By this time, we were close enough to our hotel to walk back. I gave our extra pizza to a homeless guy on the corner, since we had no refrigerator or time to eat it. We wanted to get some dessert (I didn't want to risk wasting more time waiting for bats again), and found a Voodoo Doughnuts shop within walking distance. These Austin folks know how to party! The streets had a bunch of bars that seemed full of people. Their shop is pretty big (I've only been to the one at Universal CityWalk in LA), and somehow we refrained from ordering one of each doughnut offered. We decided to have one for dessert, and eat the other one in the morning.
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| TEXAS |
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| Maple Bacon Doughnut & Logo Voodoo Doll Doughnut |
Which we did, outside near the hotel pool, while enjoying our last few hours at the Fairmont before checking out, boarding our bus, and going back to the airport.
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| Silver Horses in the Lobby |
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| Bye, Fairmont! |
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| I love our flag |
We were happy to see that our plane was the one with the California flag on it! SWA had thought of everything!
When we got back to Ontario, we said our goodbyes and thank yous to Weff before getting dinner at Chevy's and going home. Mmmm...tortillas.
Thank you, Wendy, for sharing your prize with us! Thank you to Southwest for having a contest and for all of the fun I had. Thank you, Deep Eddy, for the complimentary drinks and your sponsorship. Thank you, Fairmont Austin, for your hospitality as we stayed at your gorgeous hotel.
I hope I get to return to Austin someday, and I hope I get to see bats flying around whenever that happens.
Sounds like a fun trip, except for the spillage parts. I love that Linda sang karaoke in the car!
ReplyDeleteI now want a Bistro. All the flights we've been on lately have been completely full.