Concert in the Park 2008

This summer, the free Sunday evening concerts relocated to the grassy area in front of the performing arts center. The new location is great, the music carries well and the center really provides a nice backdrop.

The sun setting to our right:
Some little kids dancing at the front:

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Hot Sauce Festival 2008

Every year, the Austin Chronicle hosts a hot sauce festival. There are hot sauce contests for commercial hot sauce and amateur hot sauce makers, as well as tons of booths where you can sample locally made hot sauce and salsa. And of course, there's live music throughout the day. The charge for admission is a donation of 3 canned goods for the food bank.

Some of the booths for hot sauce sampling:

We were only there for the last couple hours of the festival, so we only saw one band. Luckily it was a really good band.
I don't think people were crying because this brand of hot sauce was so hot, they were crying because clowns are freaking scary!!!!!

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Shopping on Guadalupe

From around 21st to 27th on Guadalupe, there's a strip of stores and restaurants across from the UT campus. Some are chain stores like Urban Outfitters and Jamba Juice, others are unique. It's a great spot to go for lunch and shopping.
There are a couple of nice murals along the way. There's also a Scientology Center, so if you're easily brainwashed you might want to cross to the other side of the street when you see it.

intellectual property

The bookstore "intellectual property," in the strip of stores across from UT, lures you inside with the artwork all over the outside of the store.

I mean come on, Johnny Cash and the Virgin Mary? How can you not want to take a peek inside?
It's a big bookstore with a bunch of different sections. It's pretty much impossible to buy a book from a regularly priced bookstore when you're aware of the existence of Half Price Books, but it's still fun to browse around in a silly list price bookstore.
High ceilings, quotes written on a skinny strip of blackboard above the windows.

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San Marcos Outlets

The San Marcos outlet mall is huge. It's designed to make you feel like you're in Italy.. a sort of Vegas-y, Texas version of Italy. You can find the Gap, Neiman Marcus, and everything in between here. Most of the stores really do have cheap, extremely marked down outlet prices, which is fantastic. However, a few stores seem to not know the meaning of "outlet." If the discount is only 10%, or if you don't even tell us what the discount is on the tag so we can get psyched about the major deal we're getting, that's not outlet.

The mall is all outdoors, so it doesn't induce fits of anger and aggression the way indoor malls do.

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Austin Museum of Art (downtown location)

The downtown AMOA is all modern art, with a permanent collection and rotating new exhibits. I don't have much to say about it, because I've never been much of a fan of modern art. If you're into modern art, you must check it out, and if not, head straight to The Blanton Museum of Art instead (which we'll hopefully blog about soon).

By the way, photography is not allowed, which I learned after taking the photo above. Go figure. I was allowed to take photos at the Louvre.

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Beauty and the Beast in the park 2008

The Zilker Park theatre hosts a free performance every summer, with performances every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. This summer was Beauty and the Beast, the musical. It was quite entertaining. We went on a Sunday and it was packed- so don't get there too late (the performance starts at the beginning of sunset) and bring your own chairs/blankets as well as something to snack on.

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Blue Lapis Light

Blue Lapis light is an arial dance company. Every year, they put on an amazing arial dance show at a different location in Austin. This year their dance took place at the federal buildings downtown. Even if you don't like dance, Blue Lapis is a must. The dancers spin and twirl many stories off the ground. It's breathtaking and a little scary. The dancers are all rigged up to wires, but there are no nets below.

No photos were allowed when we went to see the performance, so I had to dig around online and steal one. Check their website if you're interested in arial dance classes, or to watch for the date and location of their next performance, which will probably happen next summer.


Here's a video clip of a performance:

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Windy Point Park on Lake Travis

Visiting this park is worth it just for the amazing drive to the park. It kind of reminds me of driving up route 1 past Malibu. Fresh air, breathtaking views, extravagant homes, and occasional moments where you feel you are altogether too close to the edge of a cliff. Worth every minute. It was pretty cloudy when we went, so you can only kind of get an idea of how beautiful it is from these photos.

The water is nice and not too cold to go for a swim. You can also boat and whatnot on the lake.

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Long Center for the Performing Arts

We checked out Austin's brand new performing arts center during "free concert weekend." We saw some really nice classical music performances. The bad news is I don't know if they're going to have any more free weekends, the good news is you can see plenty of music or theater performances here if you're willing to fork over a little cash. If you still want to see a performance for free, the summertime free concerts in the park have been relocated to the park area in front of the center, on Sunday evenings.

View of Austin from inside the center.
Outdoor performance area in front.

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Austin Zoo

The zoo is in a park-like setting; and there's a great variety of animals. I haven't gotten this close to animals before at an American zoo.

The monkey below was very child-like in his attentions to his stuffed animal. He would cuddle it, look at it, pet it, and was completely oblivious to the visitors watching him from just a couple feet away.

This squirrel monkey (eating watermelon below) is my favorite kind of monkey. I don't think monkeys can possibly get cuter than this. I fed a baby one part of a banana on a trip to Costa Rica and it was definitely the highlight of the whole trip.

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Capitol Building

The Capitol Building is open to the public, for free tours or just to have a look around and take pictures. See the website for tour times, hours, etc.

Ryan prefers the Capitol Building in DC, which I can understand, because after all it is the Capitol Capitol. I prefer this one though, just because it feels more accessible and laid back. In DC you can almost feel a homeland security guy staring you down from behind a potted plant.

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Dell Diamond

Dell Diamond is home of the Round Rock Express team; see website for details about various events (fireworks night, half-price beer night, etc). We went for half-price beer night, and also got half-price tickets because it was simultaneously "law and order night" which meant anyone working in some kind of law-related field got half price tickets. (Subsidizing lawyers? I wonder if Dell Diamond is just trying to build up brownie points for the day they get sued after someone gets hit in the face with a ball.) Anyway, our tickets were $3 for great seats and I think we paid $2 for beer. It was a good night.

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Zilker Botanical Gardens

The Botanical Gardens are beautiful. You can spend a nice relaxing afternoon here wandering around amongst the flowers, ponds and greenery. Springtime is the most colorful, but you can still enjoy the gardens in the summer and fall as well. We went in the fall. Admission is free, but you may have to pay $3 for parking unless you're willing to park a little ways away and walk.

We're going to have to return again and explore more (and blog more) because I just realized after browsing online that we somehow completely missed the really cool looking Hartman Prehistoric Garden on our first visit.

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Round Rock Outlets

The Round Rock outlet mall is not nearly as huge as the San Marcos outlets, so if you like to get your cardio by shopping you will prefer San Marcos. However Round Rock still has a good variety of stores, and is also very pretty since it's outdoors. If I must shop, I prefer to shop in an outdoor mall. There's something about indoor malls that just makes you want to stab yourself. If you feel the same, you'll like Austin.

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Austin City Limits 2007

Austin is known for having tons of music festivals. Even when a festival isn't a "music" festival, there is still most likely live music throughout the festival. For example, the yearly Austin wine festival, or the ice cream festival. Sometimes I think all these dozens of festivals are just excuses for people to get together and listen to live music. Not that I'm complaining!

Anyway, ACL is great because it's 3 days long, features tons of great bands, and is a lot cheaper than the 5 day South by Southwest music festival. For a 3-day pass, tickets are only $135 or $150 if you manage to buy early. Regular price is $170.

The guitars you see below are usually placed strategically all over Austin. For the festival, they bring them all together at the park.

Map of the stages near the entrance:

So many people. In the distance you can see tents, some have merchandise for sale and others have food and drinks.

A couple of the stages.

Bob Dylan, the last performance of the festival. He was pretty amazing to see live, although very old and raspy. Yes I know he's always been raspy. He was especially raspy.

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