Austin Markets and Museums

2015-02 - Markets & Museums: This photo album documents some of our favorite markets and a couple of museum visits we made during our winter stay in Austin.

While we usually shop at the local HEB supermarket we occasionally find our way to one of the Fiesta supermarkets where there's a real Spanish feel. Tortilla's by the truck load, lots of interesting peppers, Spanish papers and magazines, cheap wine, huge tomatillos and even fresh cactus. I've tried fried cactus with some freshly squeezed lime juice. It tastes fine but the worry about cactus prickles make it less than fun.

We found some Robert Earl Keen Honey Pils at our local CVS store. Everyone in Texas is a fan of REK -- here's another good reason.

We have a nice gift shop we frequent, the Austin Gift Company, near Lamar and Ben White. It sells lots of locally crafted things and is a better bet than the stuff along 6th downtown. There's a "Day of the Dead" lunch box in this collection.

There's a couple of photos of the HEB and Whole Foods. We used to be really keen about Whole Foods (it started in Austin) but are now pretty devoted to our local HEB. HEB also has a couple of upmarket stores that compete against Whole Foods -- they're called the "Central Markets". We go there sometimes. Sometimes we're there to see music as they have a dining area with live music (it's Austin after all). We saw Rosie & the Ramblers at Central Markets on North Lamar. She's very accomplished, really enjoyed her music. We saw a blue grass group Silas Lowe at Central Markets, Westgate in South Austin. One oddity at these dining areas attached to the Central Market -- you can order food and wine from the servers there but some people just opened food and wine they bought at the store! A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and some music.

There's also a couple of pictures of farmer's markets. We usually catch the Saturday Downtown market and the BlueBonnet market on Sunday. There are some vendors that we buy from regularly.

Finally there's some gallery pictures from the Blanton Museum of Art (just north of the capitol) and from the Mexic-Arte Musem on Congress just south of the capitol. In another album I have pictures from the San Antonio Art Museum.