Austin: Monday: Wildflower Center, Lockhart, and more South of Austin

For Monday's activities, I'd planned to do things from my list that were outside the city.

These pictures track most of the day's activities, though this blog entry has more details.

First, I went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. It was disappointing, especially compared to the previous day's botanical gardens. It wasn't just that the center had an entrance fee and the gardens did not. It wasn't that the center took less time (under an hour) to explore. It was that the wildflower center just wasn't cool. Maybe it was the wrong time of year (though lots of flowers were in bloom) or maybe I'm not much of a fan of wildflowers. I liked the scattered sculptures more than the wildflowers themselves. I do, however, applaud the wildflower center's enlightenment: it provided a walking tour via podcast or cell phone. However, the tour didn't tell me where to walk next--I had to infer it from the descriptions and names of the tracks. Also, the last few tracks of the podcast were inexplicably in Spanish.

Incidentally, I enjoyed the center's special artist exhibit of Shou Ping, an artist who paints paper with watercolors, folds the paper into flowers, and layers them in a frame, creating pieces of art with depth.

After the center, my next destination was Lockhart, the barbecue capital of central Texas. As I left the center, it started pouring. My drive to Lockhart was longer than expected and, in fact, scary. Due to the rain, I drove 20 mph under the speed limit and fought intermittent hydroplaning the whole way.

Lockhart has three famous barbecue joints, all of which have existed for over half a century. These no-frills joints--most only recently added side dishes to their menus--and their cooking technique of smoking meat rubbed with a dry spice mix arose as Southern African-American culture met the culture of the German immigrants to this area. The meat menus are about half brisket and ribs in various cuts, a pork chop, and about half sausages of various types. I stuck my head in each of the three joints to get the feel of the places. They all have walls decorated with history. They all have huge barbecue pits. They generally serve meat on butcher paper. Everything else is secondary and still reflect cheap market prices. For instance, Smitty's sold $2 beers.

First up was Smitty's, where I had delicious brisket and good ribs. As I ate the brisket, I wondered whether I really loved barbecue or if this was really that good. It'd been a while since I had barbecue of any type and even longer since I had a dry-rub no-sauce style, so I wasn't sure if my calibration was plausible.

Next, I looked in on Black's but didn't stay long. I didn't plan to buy anything there, but the layout required me to walk down a narrow path past a buffet line of sides to get to the meat counter. It made looking without ordering awkward. I didn't see anything like the atmosphere/flavor of Smitty's meat-grill back room, but maybe I didn't approach deeply enough.

Finally, I went to Kreuz. It's a huge setup, with a dining hall at least five times bigger than Smitty's and many more barbecue pits. The brisket here, though good, wasn't in the same league as the one I had at Smitty's. This reminded me what normal barbecue tastes like, and it confirmed that my delight with the first brisket was legitimate. It was extraordinary. As always, the picture captions have more details.

As for Lockhart itself, it's small. The downtown extends a block or two in each direction from the central courthouse. From driving around, I spotted three churches in this small vicinity.

I had a list of ideas of possible activities to do in this vicinity south of Austin. From this list, I selected those that were reasonable given the weather.

This required another dangerous drive, this time to the town of San Marcos. Its layout is surprisingly similar to Lockhart's: there's a central courthouse (which even looks alike) with the town radiating a few blocks in each direction. San Marcos is, though, a little denser and large than Lockhart.

My goal in San Marcos was to see The Wittliff Collection, a gallery of southwest and Mexican photography and writing, located in Texas State University at San Marcos's Alkek Library. After driving in many circles (actually jagged, overlapping polygons) and getting directions a few different ways, I eventually got to the campus's visitor parking lot. I knew the gallery space was under renovation and had been moved elsewhere in the library building. I didn't realize that only a fraction of the small collection would be on display. I saw seven black-and-white artistic photographs and selection of props and photographs from the movie Lonesome Dove. Thoroughly unexciting. Nevertheless, I got to look out the library's seventh floor windows into the rain. And I saw the campus, an unusual mix of an ordinary functional campus / residential buildings surrounded by densely-packed single-family houses.

Next up was a not-as-dangerous drive to Gruene, not because the rain was any less fierce but because the route was on an interstate--a smoother road with fewer places for water to collect.

Gruene is a historic town perhaps four blocks long. Most buildings are what appeared to be century-old homes converted into shops, often selling antiques. I picked up a booklet map of Gruene subtitled "Resisting Change Since 1872."

As I drove north from Gruene to the airport, the rain began to clear. Then I hit a traffic jam. I thought I'd planned enough time to get to the airport, so I wasn't worried. I looked at the distance to go, calculated that I'd still be fine going at 15 miles per hour, taking double the time it should take. Ten minutes later I did some math and realized I was averaging 5 miles per hour. Then I began worrying. I contemplated contingency plans.

At some point the traffic cleared. I sped to the airport, returned the car, checked in, went through security, and made it the gate thirty minutes before my scheduled departure time, which turned out to be an hour before the actual departure time. I'm glad Austin's airport is small and not busy: it took me only five minutes from entering the car return lane until I was standing at the gate.

Incidentally, while I waited in the airport, I noticed it has no national chains, only local chains and local shops. I also noticed a stage for the airport's regular live music performances. Though I didn't get to hear any, I feel this is a good observation on which to close my Austin trip report.

Austin: Sunday: UT Austin, Various Museums, Zilker Gardens, and more

Sunday was a busy day.

These pictures represent mostly everything I did this day, even if they lack the details.

I started early. At 9:00am, I started following the Fodor guidebook's walking/driving tour of the University of Texas at Austin. Here's the path I took, as recorded by my cell phone's GPS. (The long line in the northwest is when I began driving for lunch and forgot to turn off recording.) The Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum appeared early on the tour. It's about his life, his politics, and the times in which he lived. As I wasn't interested in it, I hadn't planned to visit it on this trip to Austin, but now I was at the building and entrance was free, so how could I resist?

The museum has a few neat sections. I liked the exhibit on gifts to the president from other countries: e.g., a Diego Riviera painting from Mexico, ceremonial swords from Morocco. I enjoyed looking at the items before reading the plaques and trying to guess what country gave them to the United States. What countries do you think gave an ivory tusk, an ornamental painted wooden mask, and a seat (for rulers) carried on poles? It's interesting to think about the criteria countries use in selecting their gifts. I imagine the person in charge of the country wants it to simultaneously reflect his personality, show that he knows what the president likes, reflect his country's culture and history, make a statement about how we wants his country viewed in the future, and do it all in a non-stereotypical and non-offensive way (e.g., don't make it reflect a history of slavery). It's not an easy decision.

I also enjoyed the joke-telling, animatronic, life-sized, realistic President Johnson. I had read guide books that made a big deal about the animatronic Johnson and I kind of sneered: oh gee, a mechanical animated figure, how exciting. But it was the highlight of the museum, making me glad I stopped by, and here's why: it re-told Johnson's jokes, and he's a funny guy. The emphasis in the guide books should've been on the humor value, not the fact that the jokes were told by an animatronic figure. I still remember the joke about hearing versus drinking.

Finally, I enjoyed the neat section profiling Lady Bird Johnson, and the section with large, pretty, luminous transparency photographs of the interior of the White House.

I spent thirty minutes, if that, at the museum.

I explored a bit more of U. T. Austin, mostly on foot, observed that the central part of the college felt like a campus, and then bailed to head to Fonda San Miguel, where I had a reservation for brunch. It was a short drive which, though through central Austin, felt suburban. Oaks were everywhere.

Fonda San Miguel served excellent, authentic Mexican food. The waiter explained how most dishes they serve are regional. For instance, the ceviche comes from somewhere on the west side of Mexico, the cochinita pibil comes from the Yucatan, the mole comes from central Mexico, the carne comes from northern Mexico (cattle country). I spent two-and-a-quarter hours at the restaurant, eventually trying 95% of the buffet, and there was only one dish that truly missed the mark. I could really taste the quality of the ingredients, especially the meats but also the freshness of the fruit as well. The service was similarly good. For instance, I was constantly supplied with hot tortillas (both flour and corn) and if I didn't use them for a while and they cooled, the waiter replaced them. When I left, I could barely walk.

After brunch, I returned to UT Austin to finish my tour of the campus and vicinity, walking this path. (Sorry, my cell phone GPS wasn't working, so I recorded this one manually on a web application.) While there, I picked up a map of sculptures on campus--possibly useful for Game clues. Near the end of my tour, I stopped by the Harry Ransom Center, a small exhibit hall. In addition to two special exhibits, it had on display a rare, full, first-edition Gutenberg bible (I saw another one recently in NYC), and the first photograph, which was printed on metal and so worn or damaged that I found it basically impossible to see. Luckily the signs nearby explained what it actually looked like.

One special exhibit traces the history and popularity of the Rubáiyát series of verses by Omar Khayyám. As I hadn't heard of these poems previously, the exhibit found it difficult to capture my attention. I learned the verses became popular after being translated into English by an amateur translator named FitzGerald. Borges wrote about the translation: "From the lucky conjunction of a Persian astronomer who ventures into poetry and an English eccentric who explored Spanish and Oriental texts without understanding them entirely emerges an extraordinary poet who resembles neither of them." The poems became very popular at the end of the nineteenth century, and were re-translated, re-printed, and parodied many times. The part of the exhibit I liked the most was a chart showing where and when various versions of the poems were published. It provided a neat visualization of how the poems spread around the world. I think it would fun to analyze the spread of other things (books, whatever).

The other exhibit was on the photographer Fritz Henle. Versatile, he photographs everything, including people and scenery, all reasonably well, though not necessarily great. He's especially good at composing shots of people against backgrounds.

I then walked to Texas State History Museum. It's a pretty good history museum, with lots of artifacts, documents, models, and pictures, and covering the period from the original Indian inhabitants of the land to the present day. I spent two hours there.

First, I explored an Ellis-Island-like special exhibit about immigration, which occurred predominately through the town of Galveston. Judging by the immigration maps, it served as a gateway to the midwest. I learned how railroads and businesses encouraged immigration by providing discounted railroad fares in exchange for living/building somewhere. I read interesting transcripts of interviews between immigration officials and immigrants. Lots of jews were rejected because the officials claimed their poor physique meant they were likely to become public charges.

I also watched a sound & effect show, Texas Spirit, about spirit/character. When I say sound & effect show, I mean that, for example, when the film talked about plagues of grasshoppers everywhere, "even in your hair," I felt a puff of air into my hair. Some audience members gasped or screamed. One point the film makes about Texas character is if someone says something can't be done, go ahead and do it. I now understand George Bush better.

The museum itself focused on the colonization of Texas and the many wars which involved Texas in the 1800s (the war for independence, war with the indians, war with mexico, the civil war). I saw the "come and take it" flag, one of the most verbally direct flags produced in recent times (longer history). I learned the location of the capital changed many times--6 times in 1836 alone--as Texas tried to survive its war for independence. The capital also switched locations a couple of times in the next decade as politicians fought over whether it should be Austin or Houston.

The museum didn't have much after 1876, the time of the most recent Texas constitution, or at least not much mention again of politics. It did cover ranching, segregation, movies, the Texas centennial, and products of the land (oil and agriculture).

After the museum, on the way to my next destination, I decided to detour and drive around the opulent historic Bremond Block. It's a bunch of nice houses mostly built in the later half of the nineteenth century by members of one family. I wouldn't have minded strolling the area if I had time to spare.

Also on the way to my next destination, I discovered that Barton Springs Road west of Lamar Boulevard has many good-looking restaurants with patios and stages, one after another.

My next destination was the Zilker Botanical Garden and especially its Japanese Garden. All the gardens are pleasant and lush. The Japanese one, filled with rocks, streams, bamboo groves, bridges, and a coi pond, is so photogenic that many couples were there getting pictures taken of them (likely to display at their wedding). I was a little nervous about time I had before the garden closed and wished I could've wandered the paths more slowly, perhaps while listening to an ipod. Still, worries aside, I got to see everything. Nevertheless, I did miss out on one thing: if I weren't in a hurry, this would've been a great place to take a self-portrait. As it is, I have no pictures of myself in Austin.

As I left the garden, I noticed the surrounding park, Zilker Metropolitan Park was a big park--at 351 acres, certainly too big to walk (and it's not designed for walking)--complete with all the standard facilities. Also, by taking a wrong turn, I discovered that some people have nice single-family homes practically next to the park.

In rapid-fire fashion, I swung by Mount Bonnell Park, the highest point in Austin, and Pennybacker Bridge / 360 bridge (on loop 360 highway). The latter, though famous for being a bridge where none of its support structures touch the water, I found pretty unexciting. It looks like a standard, simple, small bridge.

For dinner I headed to Casino El Camino, allegedly one of the best burger joints in Austin. The joint is a bar first, restaurant second. It's dark. There's loud rock music. Everyone gets IDed at the door. There are pool tables upstairs. One orders food through a window in the back. I sat in the patio out further back, the place where the "cleaner" crowd hung out; the grungier, harder-drinking crowd sat inside by the bar.

As for the food, the burger turned out to be a perfectly average, decent burger. (I would've preferred In-n-Out or, best yet, Chez Maman in San Francisco.) Especially given its quality, I was surprised and a bit disturbed by how easily I put away this supposedly three-quarters-of-a-pound burger. Admittedly, it had been nine hours since I had brunch, but brunch was enormously large.

And thus concluded my second full (thirteen to fourteen hour) day of exploring Austin. I was worried about the predicted thunderstorms, but none came. In fact, the weather was the same as the previous day.

Austin: Saturday: Downtown Austin, Bats, and the State Capitol

These pictures and this entry simultaneously describe the day's activities.

The day began, as most do, with breakfast. I headed to Maria's Taco Xpress for an authentic Tex-Mex breakfast of migas, basically a breakfast taco. As soon as I pulled up to this funky joint, I thought, "what an awesome place." (Look at the pictures.) I took it as an omen that this would be a good trip, a perspective I maintained despite not liking the food very much.

After breakfast I drove downtown. As I couldn't find parking near where I planned, I mentally rearranged the day's schedule and to start somewhere else downtown. In the process, I forgot one reason I wanted to park where I did: a chance to visit Austin's largest farmers market. Ah well. Regarding other activities I ended up not doing on Saturday, I also skipped Eeyore's Birthday Party Festival. Although the name and idea tempted me, wikipedia's description didn't make it sound that special.

Instead, I ended up near the Texas State Capitol. From this point, I was on foot until lunch. Here's my route. I first wandered briefly through the Texas State Capitol's Visitor's Center, and decided there was too much text and not enough items to see and that I didn't have the patience.

As for the capitol building itself, I took a short walking tour. What most impressed me was the way everything from the floor to the furniture to the light fixtures show Texas pride, yet in a nice, understated way. Also, along the tour I learned that the government didn't spend any money on the building: it gave land grants in exchange for labor and materials.

After the building tour, I picked up a brochure and did a self-guided tour of the capitol grounds. Other than being pretty, they're none too exciting.

Next, I began to explore Austin's main street: Congress Avenue. I soon found the Austin History Center library and picked up some maps for walking tours. I'd originally planned to take some of the Austin Convention and Visitor bureau's walking tours. I heard their tours are fantastic, but I missed them because I didn't realize until I was already in Austin that they required 48-hour notice. Regardless, I toured this and another neighborhood using the detailed booklets they produce.

Walking around downtown was stress-free because all the one-way streets made it easy to check whether a street was safe to cross. Also, although warm, the wind made it reasonable walking weather.

I decided to enter the small Austin Museum of Art because its current exhibits sounded interesting when I read about them on the web. One exhibit was photographs by Clifford Ross. He makes huge (10' x 6') impressive photographs of mountains. He also did some experimental stuff that I cared for less. Another exhibit was Lordy Rodriguez's State of America. He drew reconfigured maps of states, where shapes and places names look familiar but the relationships between everything is wrong. I didn't get it, but thought these pieces might make a good Game clue. The 12:19 exhibit, a product of the 12:19 project, consisted mainly of displays of twitter feeds captured at 12:19pm from various cities, providing a slice of life from around the world.

After a little more walking downtown, I decided it was time for a late lunch. I grabbed a westbound bus to the Whole Food flagship store. On the way I saw that W. 6th St. has many pubs, some with pleasant patios.

The Whole Foods flagship store is big. Its enormousness was overwhelming. I decided not to take pictures because I'd end up taking too many. The store has so many counters at which to buy various freshly prepared foods, both cool and hot, I don't want to attempt to list them all. It even has a pizza oven. As for counters which don't cook food for you, there is a huge cheese selection (bigger than most specialty cheese shops), and large dessert and bread counters. Another counter is devoted to chocolates and truffles, and another to nuts, roasted and seasoned. The coffee bar has over two dozen types of coffee. A stand has more than a dozen salts in different colors and shapes. You see what happens if I try to list things? I'm glad I skipped listing all the prepared food counters. Nevertheless, I will mention there's a raw food counter that had such unusual concoctions as cheesecake, bean-less hummus (zucchini was the base), and mac `n cheese (because pasta requires cooking, cauliflower was the base).

The scope of the grocery part of the market was similarly large. Not only were there fruits and vegetables such as blood oranges, purple beans, and dragon tongue beans (which I'd never heard of before) not normally found in supermarkets, but there were also a much larger variety of pre-sliced fruit than all supermarkets I've been to. And they even have pre-sliced vegetables. The seafood counter, in addition to the usual suspects such as Alaskan halibut (sold as large 20+ lb fish), had artic char, which I rarely see sold fresh. They also sell a selection of house-smoked fish. The dairy sells fresh duck eggs. The butcher makes sausages, sometimes with veal, quail, or buffalo. All the meat comes from animals on vegetarian diets; the cows in particular are all grass-fed. The beer selection might rival bev-mo's. The bakery makes gluten-free breads, even going as far as making gluten-free hamburger buns.

Everything about it makes it a great example of economics of scale.

After having lunch and exploring the store, I looked around the area, found nothing worth mentioning, and took the bus back to Congress Avenue.

Back downtown, I continued going to all the places mentioned in the walking tour brochure. I learned the east-west streets, now numbered, used to be Texas tree names. The north-south streets remain named after Texas rivers. This sounds like the kernel of a good Game clue.

I ended up walking this path for the rest of my daytime explorations. Over the course, I explored 6th Street, Austin's liveliest street. I wanted to see it during the daytime before getting the feel of it at night. As you can tell from the pictures, it has a freaken' high density of bars. Most reside in restored 19th-century buildings.

After seeing the historic buildings on 6th Street and nearby, I walked to my car to change into pants for the evening, then walked all the way down Congress Avenue to the bridge, on the way observing more sights the walking tour brochure mentions. Once at the bridge, I settled down to get ready for the bats.

Yes, bats. 1.5 million bats live under the Congress Avenue bridge and emerge at dusk to feed. As it got dark, I began to hear the bats' squeaks as they woke up. It built the suspense. Eventually they emerged. I took pictures and videos. The bats took a while to emerge: it takes time for that many bats to fly away.

After the bats, I explored Austin's nightlife. The weather was perfect for nighttime walking. I walked this path, first exploring the Warehouse district (around 4th Street), which was like 6th except the venues were bigger and the buildings weren't as old, and then re-exploring 6th. I also explored Red River Street, which also had large venues but these weren't warehouses and were often outdoors. As I said in the Austin overview, there's a ton of live music, people at doors trying to entice you to enter, and such competition that some bars offer $2 beers and no cover.

I wasn't ready to tackle the big burger at the place I had planned to go to for dinner, so I ended up opting for small dinner at the Roaring Fork, a place nearby on Congress Avenue I didn't plan on visiting. I had a caesar salad with corn croutons (funky and a little wrong) and a "hot huckleberry bread pudding", which was basically a muffin, not bread pudding.

After dinner, on the way home I tried to drive down 6th Street to see how it looked later in the evening, but it was closed to traffic. They must've closed it between when I was there around ten o'clock and when I tried to drive it closer to midnight. I guess this gives a sign of when things begin to get started on a Saturday night. Also, I tried to drive down 4th to the warehouse district. 4th was open but bumper-to-bumper. I bailed on the idea.

Austin: Friday: Arrival

Getting to Austin was pretty simple, though it took a while. My only real complaint is that I didn't get a chance to eat dinner because Southwest doesn't sell food and none of my layovers were long enough.

I took one picture relating to my travel.

Upon landing at 11pm, a warm and humid evening greeted me. I picked up my luggage and waited in the line to pick up my rental car. It took over an hour to get my car! I'd booked with Hertz because it was open past midnight, later than all the other companies. My plane, however, landed on time so I didn't need this safety hatch. I guess other people booked at this time of night with Hertz for similar reasons. (No other car company had lines.) While I waited, I chatted with the Texas-based software engineer in line behind me.

Finally, I checked into the hotel where I'd be staying for the trip. It turned out to be a reasonably nice hotel. The water in the sink and shower may have been soft, but I'd actually call it slick. It took a little getting used to. Nevertheless, I'd stay there again. In unrelated news, I was surprised to find a treadmill in my room.

Austin Overview

I'd been talking about seeing Austin for quite some time. From Friday, April 24, 2009, to Monday, April 27, 2009, I finally went through with it.

Although technically a city, Austin doesn't feel dense like a city should. With the exception of a few streets (N. Congress, E. 6th, W. 4th), the stores are too big and too scattered. Indeed, even on foot a block off of a major street, I could look down the next block, see not much of anything, and decide it's not worth walking in that direction (unless I already had a destination in mind).

Two things define my image of Austin: dining patios and live music.

First, Austin has a huge number of restaurants, pubs, and bars with outdoor seating, whether in an interior or backyard courtyard or on a wooden patio in front. I guess the weather makes this reasonable year-round.

Second, it's not hype: Austin is the place for live music. Walking down East 6th Street, there was always at least one band in a venue on each side of the street on each block, usually more. Live music is everywhere. For instance, when I dropped by a hotel on a Saturday afternoon to use the bathroom, I saw a band setting up in the lobby.

Regarding Texas, I observed many historical sites spent much time and emphasis on the history of the Republic of Texas: the decade or so after independence from Mexico before joining the United States. Although it's true that it's interesting to talk about the writing of the Texas declaration of independence and the constitution and about the various wars and political maneuverings that happened near both ends of this period, I felt there may have been more focus on this than necessary--it gave a feeling of "look at us; we're different from the rest of the United States; don't you forget it."

I also noticed that everywhere I went, I tended to be surrounded by white people. This surprised me, as I know Texas has a significant immigrant population. It felt a little weird. I guess that the places I visited are ones only white people tend to go? The only time I noticed non-trivial numbers of non-whites (aside from the few occasional brown Hispanic-Americans that looked like the result of multiple generations of intermarriage) involved spotting Chinese students near college campuses.

By the way, although I didn't see many single-family homes in and around Austin (this is simply due to where I went) so my sample is small and unrepresentative, those I saw were as nice and distinctive as those I saw in Atlanta, and larger.

This trip I focused my attention on sights within Austin, and I hit the major ones. There are a few places in Austin that vaguely tempted me and that, on another trip, I might've decided to fit into my schedule. I won't mention places I considered going outside Austin, such as the bluebonnet trail, a driving trail northwest of Austin that passes many miles of bluebonnet flower fields (for which it actually was the perfect time of year). I list undone within-Austin activities here for my future reference:

• explore the Blanton Museum of Art. Although it's Austin's top art museum and most guidebooks put it in their list of top things to do, I looked at the exhibits online and I just wasn't feeling it.
• browse the boutiques and funky shops on South Congress.
• watch the sunset over Lake Travis, probably sitting with a drink on a deck at The Oasis restaurant. (I skipped this only because every day was overcast.)
• walk the various hike/bike trails near the river, especially by Town Lake and Lady Bird Lake.
• visit the Mexic-Arte Museum. It's a small museum that had one exhibit that interested me, but I didn't feel like paying an entrance fee only to see a collection of traditional ritual Nahua Indian masks.
• wander the Unlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum.