Wierd Austin

When we arrived in Austin, we picked up a copy of The Chronicle to get feel for the city and found ads upon ads for delicious food, and a page per day dedicated to live music in the 50-100 venues in the city. I then found out that Austin considers itself as "The Live Music Capital of the World". So we tried it all: Mexican food, finger-lickin’ BBQ, Amy’s ice cream, Home Slice famous pizza, Thai chicken and basil, and a few salads to meet the minimum daily requirement for fruits and vegetables. We also listened to a Gypsy Swing jazz band, a blues band, a folk band, and a whole lot of random street music.

We happened to be in Austin for First Thursday, a monthly street festival on South Congress and one of the many events keeping Austin weird. Through our friends A.B. and B.B., we met local artists, shopkeepers and had a great time people and pet-watching and music listening.

Austin is known for one of the largest number of urban bats. Over 1 million bats live under the Congress Bridge from spring to fall and at dusk they all come out to feed on the city’s insects. It looked like a scene from a horror movie as the stream of bats flew out from underneath the bridge, flying east over the river. We tried taking pictures, but the little guys are too fast!

We also visited a company, DieselGreen fuels, making a name for itself in the world of biodiesel. Sacha will elaborate in a future post.