Austin, TX

Update: Texas is still hot. And even with the twice-daily slathering of SPF 45 and a great big hat, I haven't gotten so much sun in years. Each day my sightseeing has had to be cut short about 3 pm so that I could get in a cold shower and a nap before tackling the nightlife.

Day 1: En route from Houston to Austin, I passed through the little town of Luling, TX. My grandmother is from there, so I stopped to take a couple of pictures. So far as I can tell, it hasn't changed since my grandmother was there.

First, brunch at Z's, and some really great huevos rancheros. I went to UT Austin, walked around campus a bit, and made it as far as the Texas State History Museum. Not something I would usually go into, but hey, it was air-conditioned. UT Austin (besides being way cool) is most famous for its bell tower--Charles Whitman climbed up there in 1966 and opened fire on the campus, thereby originating the term "tower killer." I meant to explore downtown and the shops and bars, but I was hot. A cold shower/nap awaited. My host, and friend from Columbia, took me out for burritos and margaritas. First, though, we stopped off at Cork & Co, where I had a lovely 2006 Joullian Chardonnay, and then took in the nightly bat show at Congress Avenue bridge. The bats have become a symbol of Austin; there's a huge colony that nests under the bridge, and they exit each night around dusk. The whole bridge was lined with people waiting to see them. It wasn't quite the mass exodus I had expected--more like a steady stream of bats--but it was still cool. Even though bats smell. Yuck.

Day 2: San Antonio. It's about an hour's drive from Austin, so I headed down first thing in the morning to check it out. I have to say there wasn't much to recommend it. It was flat, hot, and dusty, and I couldn't see any signs of culture or nightlife, besides a few signs for the Spurs. I saw the Alamo, of course; I thought what everyone thinks, which is, "I thought it would be bigger." I also couldn't help thinking about Ozzy Osbourne's "incident" there in 1982; he got liquored up after a concert, wandered down to the Alamo in his wife's clothing, and pissed all over the side. Texans hold the Alamo as a shrine, so naturally they didn't take kindly to Ozzy expectorating on it. He got kicked out of the state of Texas and had to pay a big fine. Now there's a group of religious nuts on the internet that claim that ever since that incident, the numbers 666 have been slowly appearing on the side wall of the Alamo.

Since I could only entertain myself with Ozzy and the devil for so long, I then drove through the Texas Hill Country, famous for its wineries. The Hill Country is aptly named; I hadn't seen any sort of natural elevation since I left Georgia, and it's surprisingly green. But even the bright greens get washed out in the intense, 100-degree, no-clouds sun. It was a pretty drive, and I ended up in Fredericksburg, de facto capitol of the Hill Country. The main drag of the town is lined with cute little shops, food stores, beer gardens, and restaurants, and even a couple of wineries, but there were far too many old, slow tourists buying ticky-tacky crap on the sidewalks for my taste. Why people find it necessary to travel all that way to buy a pressed-tin belt buckle that says, "My grandpa went to Texas and all I got was this lousy belt buckle," is beyond me. I managed to find a good bottle of merlot at the Fredericksburg Winery, got a fresh peach milkshake at a sidewalk stand (despite the old people counting the M&Ms on their sundaes to make sure they got the "right" amount), and headed back to Austin for my daily cold shower/nap. That night we headed to Malaga for tapas and a drink called the Barton Springs, which is like a mojito, only with cilantro and gin. We met up with one of her friends, and then two other people she knew showed up and joined our table. Tapas all around! Good times.

Day 3: Rest. I spent most of yesterday being decidedly non-productive. My rental car was due for an oil change, so I swapped it out for a happily bigger and better model. Did some laundry, watched some TV. Relaxed. We then took in a movie at the Alamo Drafthouse, the greatest movie theatre in the history of the world. You can drink beer during the movie. Not only that, but you can get real food (salads, burgers, tacos, etc.), and get it delivered right to your seat while you watch the movie. They have quote-alongs, and sing-alongs, and Kung Fu Fridays, and...well, it made me want to move to Austin just to hang out there. I saw "Land of the Lost"; it was exactly what you'd expect from a Will Ferrell movie, but the best part was instead of playing boring movie theatre commercials before the movie, they ran old Will Ferrell "Saturday Night Live" clips and bits of old episodes of the original "Land of the Lost." Then we went to the Broken Spoke, a real live Texas honky-tonk, and drank Lone Star beer and discussed how hot it was.

Today: on to Dallas! Though Dallas is going to have to work hard to beat the coolness of Austin.