A zero (well only a handful of miles) day and boy were we ready for it. David treated us to a wonderful home cooked breakfast and then we all got on our bikes and followed him and Susan into the centre of Austin.
There’s nothing like being shown around a city by people who actually live there. David and Susan were fantastic ambassadors and we visited the Texas State Capitol, Ladybird Lake (named in honour of First Lady Lady Bird Johnson) and cycled along the banks of the Colorado.
We discovered Ai Weiwei’s extraordinary work ‘Forever bicycles’ which alludes to the Forever brand of bicycles that flooded China’s streets during the artist’s childhood, yet remained financially out of reach for many.
We stopped for coffee in the Rainey Street Historic District, where single storey wooden houses, many transformed into bars and craft shops, jostled for space with soaring skyscrapers.
We listened in amazement as David explained that beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge, which spans the Colorado River live an estimated 750,000 Mexican free-tailed bats. A reconstruction project in 1980 created spaces approximately an inch wide and sixteen inches deep, which provide just the right temperature and humidity conditions for the bats.
While David provided the stories, Susan did a brilliant job of navigating us safely around the city’s highlights which also included the extraordinary moonlight towers – 165ft tall structures with six carbon-arc bulbs put up in the 1890s to throw light on the city streets below.
Thirty one of the towers were erected in Austin and similar towers also went up in other US cities, including Detroit and New Orleans, as well as in Europe. By 2018 only 15 were left in the world – all of them in Austin.
But Susan saved the best until last – a visit to Schlotzsky’s – a restaurant chain founded in the city in 1971 which specialises in sandwiches. It also produces what I can only describe as one of the greatest cakes in the world – a Cinnamon Roll they call a Cinnabon. It’s made with warm dough, Makara cinnamon and topped with rich cream cheese frosting and is simply divine.
The city’s slogan is ‘Keep Austin Weird’ and there’s plenty in the city which is pretty far out. But it’s also wonderful and Schlotzsky’s Cinnabon’s are the icing on the cake. We devoured them overlooking the river while taking in the skyline and then treated our incredible hosts to dinner. This was our treat to them for being so wonderful.
If only we didn’t have to get back on the bikes tomorrow – we were having so much fun without them!
We will let the pictures do the talking:
Austin is perhaps one of the nicest places you can visit in Texas. This brings back memories for me. Grackles and Schlotzsky’s great sandwiches!