Austin...Part One.

I am in Austin, TX this week celebrating my Spring Break and so far, the trip has been incredible. LB lives in an amazing house in this new "green" community where the Austin airport used to be. The entire community is all new homes and many are still under construction. Her friend just purchased a home in the area this weekend. I had a chance to scope out the community during a run yesterday and I am really impressed. It's comparable to Mud Island in Memphis--minus the thousand apartments. Though there hasn't been as much sun as I had hoped for (it's been quite cloudy,) the temperature has been warm (circa 80-85 degrees) so I cannot complain after just leaving snow in Athens.

Here's a recap of my time in Austin so far:

Restaurants: Trudy's (traditional mexican), Mandola's (Italian), Yogurt Planet (goodbye TCBY. They need one of these in every city. They provide the cups, you serve yourself from a huge variety of yogurts, add whatever toppings you want, and then you pay by the weight. Cheaper than TCBY, fresher than TCBY, BETTER.) and The Salt Lick. Now the Salt Lick is an experience like no other. It's about an hour outside Austin and it's a huge BBQ place where you can bring your own beer. It was great to see so many folks from different walks of life sitting all together at these huge picnic tables with their ice chests enjoying some of the best BBQ I've ever had. The ribs were incredible. I'm really glad we got to check it out.

The rest: When we weren't eating food (which was rare), we did manage to enjoy ourselves in Austin. We went downtown Friday night and sampled the night life. There's this bar called Qua where the dance floor is on top of aquariums with live sharks. I was hoping to go check it out but they have a dress code and flip flops isn't on it. Bummer. But we did hit up a few other places and had a great time. Saturday we went walking along the Green Belt which was great and yesterday, went to Amanda's lake house on Lake LBJ for an afternoon of relaxation. We laid out by the pool, took the boat out, and played ladder golf. It. was. awesome.

So I guess that's it for Part One. I'm here through Wednesday and will post more on the rest of the trip upon my return. Hope you're having a great start to the week!

Cheers.