Austin - Winter 2014

Kate and I spent 5 weeks in Austin this winter (late January through to early March) to repeat the wonderful time we had last year. Here are some photos of the South Austin area where we stayed. The photo at left is Kate, by her bike and the "Greetings From Austin" sign painted on the side of Road House Relics in our south Austin neighborhood. The sign is a landmark that's been recently restored.

The weather in Austin, while warmer than home here in Canada, was quite cool by times. The "polar vortex" that made for a tough winter in Canada definitely had an effect on us in Austin. There was at least one day were schools we closed because of icy roads and many mornings were quite cool. Nevertheless we had fun -- lots of Tex/Mex food, live music, biking on the river, etc. Unfortunately, I came down with a cold/flu that lasted for weeks. I was sick enough that I ended up having to see a doctor and get some medication.

The Drive Down:

We drove down over three days in our new Hyundai Elantra (we packed in our 2002 Honda Civic after the trip last year) with our two cats Richard Parker and Piscine Patel and our two bikes on the back. It's about 2,500km (or about 25 hours on interstate roads) to Austin from our home here in St Mary's Ontario.

The first night, after 9 hours of driving, we made it to Elizabethtown Kentucky just south of Louisville where we stayed at the La Quinta (one of the few hotel chains that's cat friendly). We had some really nice take away food from the Namaste Indian Cuisine and Bar next door -- we even got a discount for staying at the La Quinta. Kate was so impressed by the food there she promises to write a review.

It was a cold drive down with snow in the fields and still very cold in the morning when we awoke with a heavy frost on the car windows.

We took a little detour on the Western Kentucky Parkway to avoid Nashville and Memphis. That's a pleasant drive through rolling hill country only mostly interstate grade highways where you meet up with I55 in Missouri just north of Memphis. In retrospect, the quickest route is probably to stay on the interstate and go through Nashville and Memphis as we did last year.

That night, after another 9 hours of driving, we stayed in Texarkana TX at another La Quinta. Much warmer but still a bit cool -- no snow of course. And then the last day was a short drive to Austin arriving at mid afternoon at Casita del Sol our home on South Austin. The same place where we had stayed last year.

The Neighborhood:

Casita del Sol is an area known as Bouldin Creek in South Austin (south in the sense of south of the river) not too far from South Congress where there's lots going on that we're interested in. We like this place because of the neighborhood, the yard and the pet friendly policies. Our cats can enjoy supervised play in the back yard as you can tell from the pictures.

The neighborhood would have been working class at one time. The original homes are quite modest -- ours we'd call a cottage -- two bedroom, one bath but a nicely sized yard. As the area is so close to downtown it's a desirable neighborhood where people are buying up these old worker cottages, yanking them down and building modern brutalism architected homes in a style you might expect in the hills of LA. It's a transitional neighborhood.

As an older neighborhood it's well treed. Other times I've picked pecans off the street where they've dropped from the trees.

The photo album has pictures of our home and others in the neighborhood.

Markets:

There are a couple of farmer's markets we regularly went to for fresh veggies. The HEB supermarket around the corner on South Congress served most of our needs although we did pop in to Whole Foods a couple of times. Whole Foods started as a hippy-dippy kind of food store in Austin. My brother Paul worked for Whole Foods for a while in Vancouver. At one time Whole Foods set the standard for quality wholesome foods but these days the supermarkets have caught up to them. HEB variously stands for "Here Everythings Better" or Howard E. Butt -- I prefer the first and we usually shopped there.

There's a farmer's market on Saturday downtown where we learned about broccoli greens. We'd never had them before -- sort of like rappini. It was winter time so winter vegetables were plentiful. There was also a nice lady who sold fish and shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico.

One day Kate bought a big bag of fresh spinach which we serve with pasta -- you boil up some pasta and at the end add in the spinach. Drain and serve with olive oil or butter (if you're not counting calories) and lots of fresh parmesan. Kate was cooking this time (I'm usually the chef) and served me a big bowl of pasta, fresh spinach and a giant sized cooked bug! A bit of fresh meat I was not expecting. Wash your spinach carefully!

The second market we regularly went to was on Saturday on South Lamar a short distance away. It has a pretty big flea market but we bought nice veggies there as well. We also tried some mead (honey wine) and some ready made Indian foods we could take home to eat later in the week. Other albums show some of the restaurants we enjoyed.

The Austin Marathon:

There's an annual marathon race early in the morning one weekend in February and part of the race is down South 1st. It's odd to wake early in the morning to the sound of live music (it's Austin so every event has live music) and cheering. I went out to explore and to get the morning paper at the neighborhood gas station. As far as I could see in either direction the street was packed solid with runners. So many that I couldn't get across the street to get my paper!

Not everyone seems to agree with the idea of running a marathon. I saw a pickup truck go by with a sign saying something along the lines of "I bet you wish you had gone to the crapper when you had the chance" (I didn't catch a photo of them). Another group, apparently the chess club, had a sign saying "You're all crazy -- you could be playing chess".

It's not the Boston Marathon but I am impressed with how big it is. Of course Austin is a city where it seems that everyone is out jogging around the lake most days.

Closing:

I'll bring this posting to a close now. And I'll be back later with more postings on our adventures while in Austin, TX this winter.