Another look: Austin, Texas

Original posts:
The bats are pretty weird, I suppose
Speed bump on the summer road trip
Oppressive heat and childhood alien flashbacks

With the SXSW music festival in Austin making a lot of headlines last month, I thought I’d revisit Austin and unload the rest of my Austin photos that haven’t yet been published.

The Alamo, pictured above, is the best movie theater I’ve ever been to. It’s pretty famous. They have tables in front of all the seating areas and even have servers, so you can order food and drinks while you watch. But most impressively, instead of running generic previews of upcoming films, they make their own pre-show entertainment! We were there to see Star Trek, and they had put together a video montage related to Star Trek. Whoever puts together these packages should be working for the big chain theaters around the country because it was really impressive.

Here’s another shot of some downtown Austin bars.

Here’s a weird story I did not report before: We walked around the University of Texas at night and around 8 pm, we noticed a few cockroaches running around on the sidewalks. Weird, we thought. Then a few more. And a few more. Eventually, there were hundreds of roaches running around. Nobody really seemed to be bothered by them. Apparently, this is an everyday occurrence. When the sun goes down, the roaches come out. How bizarre!

The University of Texas did have some impressive buildings.

Austin also had one of those ducky tours that many major cities have, with a vehicle that drives on roads in rivers. It wasn’t in my budget. They also have these in Portland and Pittsburgh. I’ve been saying forever that I want to do one of these tours, but I haven’t gotten around to it.

The main bridge leading into downtown is named after former governor Ann Richards. It’s amazing that Texas elected a Democratic governor as recently as the ’90s.

This place had some interesting branding going on. Meet the Lemon Detectives, an auto repair shop.

I think they had a few of these guitars around town.

Emo’s is one of the more famous music venues in the city.

Another view inside the capitol building.