February 21st-23rd, 2003
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Wanna go to a concert? Wanna see Erykah Badu? Go to Texas! This my second trip
to Austin, but the first one that did not involve work. I met Lauren the first time I was in town and we had a
good time hitting Austin's downtown, so I wanted to go back and enjoy the company and the sights again.
I arrived in the middle of the afternoon, caught a cab from the airport and checked into the hotel... I could have stopped by IBM, but that would have gotten me into a few meetings. I checked up from the hotel and waited for quitting time to hit dinner and whatever else before the concert. After she finished up and hit the apartment, she picked me up and we headed downtown. A quick bite to eat at a BBQ place and then off to see Erykah! Pretty cool concert hall, reminds me of the Ritz in downtown Raleigh. There were a few rappers on before the main show that went on for a while, but we couldn't figure out what they were saying so we moved to the back and chatted. We had a few drinks, listened to the awesome voice of Erykah and then left to head over to see some of her friends and head back downtown. We hit the bars and clubs of Austin, grabbing a drink or a jello shot here and there and even did a little dancing. I had a good time, but we ended off dropping Lauren's friends off on a weird note that just made things less enjoyable. I headed back to the hotel and got some sleep. The next day, we went out to the far reaches of Austin and hit a pretty sweet BBQ place that had really good food. For those of you that know Blacksburg, it reminded me of the Homeplace, only with BBQ! (I think everything in Texas involves BBQ in one way or another.) After lunch we went for a walk in the park. I wasn't keeping track of all the driving we did, so I'm not sure exactly where the park is located... The park wasn't in full bloom and the butterfly sanctuary was very flutterby-less. Even Austin has its 'winter' season. I annoyed Lauren by taking a few random photos and then we chilled out in the Japanese garden for a few minutes.
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W we went from the park to Saint Edward's University
which is located in South Austin. Lauren has applied there for getting her Education degree.
Hopefully she'll get in... someone has to teach the kids something! The campus is pretty neat.
Small colleges always have a very relaxed attitude about them, they are never as busy as
the big monster campuses so it just seems more enjoyable. I'm not much for combining colleges
and religion, but it is a nice synergy for others. And you just have to applaud the school
that carries beer in their on-campus student stores!
From there, we wandered over to the hills of Austin for a view of the sunset and a pretty good view of some of the surrounding area. The sun was real close to setting, so we hurried over to have a drink at a place called The Oasis. The plan was to have a drink and watch the sunset. We did not make it in time to see the sun drop over the horizon, but that is a pretty awesome design for a restaurant on the side of a hill. I'll have to visit it again sometime. We had a drink and then headed out to change up before going for dinner. Austin has a lot of fun things going on at any given time. I hear it is also the Live Music Captial of the U.S. which I don't doubt. Any given weekend, I'm sure there are several famous people & groups playing. (Ask Lauren, she's probably been to most of them!) We combined dinner and a movie into one thing at the Alamo Drafthouse. Again a neat idea, similar to Raleighwood here. We saw Daredevil snacked a bit and then stopped by to see Boris climbing around the cage. A pretty eventful day. I think we covered most of Austin twice in that one day. The next day was an early afternoon flight out for me. We stopped for lunch and I finished off the roll of pictures on the way to the airport. Pretty awesome trip and I'm sure there will be more!
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