Austin, TX trip update

Update on the trip to Austin, TX this past weekend:

We stayed at an Air B'n'B about 10 minutes from downtown. 3 bed room 1 bath comfortably accommodated 7 people. It came out to be $60 a couple to stay there 3 nights.

Friday: We drove straight to Vera Cruz all natural food truck to get tacos. I had the El Pastor and Beef Fajita. Both were very good but, I didn't think they warranted "Top 5 Taco according to The Food Network". There is a place where I live that I think makes better tacos. However, I would go back because it was good and they put a lot of meat on the tacos, also it was very reasonably priced.

It was 104 degrees so we went to Barton Springs. The water was cold and made the mid-summer heat disappear. I would definitely go back.

Friday night: We went out on 6th street. We ate at a burger place called Eureka! It was ok, the patties were not very big but their fried mac'n'cheese balls were great.

We bar hopped, no bar stuck out more than the other, I tried to just drink local beer. 512 Brewery makes an amazing pecan porter so thats all I drank mostly.

Saturday: had BBQ breakfast tacos at Valentina's Tex-Mex BBQ. It was amazing. Egg, cheese, potatoes, and your choice of chopped brisket, pulled pork, pork carnitas, or bacon. I got the brisket and loved it. My friend got the pulled pork and the pork carnitas and said they both were very good. The tacos were $4-$5. Like most BBQ places in Texas there was a line and a wait till the food was delivered to the table. By the time we ate our breakfast tacos it was almost lunch time. I was slightly hungover from the night before so I only had one taco. By lunch time, I was ready for some real food so I got back in line and got a sliced brisket sandwich. 1/2 pound of brisket on a bun was only $9 and delicious. My buddy order their jalapeño cheddar sausage and it was superb as well.

After all that, we went to Hope Garden, which is a graffiti park. It was cool but just covered in hipsters. We then drove around UT's campus, which is strikingly similar to LSU's (same Spanish architecture). Then we went kayak on the Colorado river which runs through the heart of Austin. $10 an hour for a single passenger boat, $15 for double, and $20 for a paddle board, and $5 for every extra hour. It was a lot of fun, one of the bridges has bats living under it and we could hear them flapping around and making their streaking noise. It was cool.

For dinner we went to Sullivan's Steak House on Colorado St. It was awesome. I had a 24 oz bone-in cowboy ribeye that was cooked perfectly and it came with a pepper corn sauce that was divine. For desert I had bananas foster bread pudding, easily the best bread pudding I've ever had.

Saturday Night we went out on Rainey St. It was a much different vibe than 6th street. 6th street is downtown so you're surrounded by big buildings and what not, and it had a good mix of every demographic. Rainey St. was like being in a really classy, up-scale Tiger Land. Basic chicks and the Bros that try to chase them made up 99% of the type of people that go out there. Most of the bars were made out of old houses that had remodeled interiors and patios to support customers vs. house guests. It was a different experience from they typical bar and I enjoyed it, just not the clientele that drink there. There was one bar made completely out of shipping containers, there was a long line to get in so we passed on going but it looked cool. We heard loud techno type music so it sounded like a fist pumping kinda joint, either way I appreciate the creativity.

Over all it was a fun trip, if I go back I will try to stick with doing outdoor activities because that is what I enjoyed the most. There is no short supply of food, there are food trucks EVERYWHERE, that makes spontaneous eating fun and there is a ton of variety, not just tex-mex or taco trucks. They had everything from burgers to Thai food. Austin is a cool place. If you've been interested in going there I recommend it.