After sleeping in a bit we caught up with D, a recent transplant and coworker of X who works remotely from Austin. It was a little rainy today so rather than walking around, he drove us to the Capitol building and then we had lunch at the local grocery store (if you can call it that) called Central Market. There is live music *everywhere* in this town, and the grocery store is no exception. And Austinites take their parks so seriously that even the kiddies have a place to romp out back while you shop.
This evening we went to support the local music scene by checking out our waiter’s early gig at Mother Egan’s Irish Pub. We stayed for a couple pints and then left to see the famous Bats emerge from Congress bridge - we got there just in time to see the flight begin! Super cool. At 8pm on the nose, two solid streams of tiny bats flew out from beneath the bridge. We stayed to watch for about 20 minutes and then left for dinner at Moonshine Bar & Grill downtown. Holy moly, this place ROCKED! I had the Broiled rainbow trout with corn bread stuffing & chile sage butter. It was served with roasted rosemary sweet potatoes, sliced yellow & green zucchini with parmesan, and honey roasted carrots. X enjoyed his cornflake fried chicken salad with mixed greens, bacon, & honey dijon. We had never ordered red velvet cake before so we ended the meal with that. Wow. If you live in Austin, this is a must!
After dinner we explored the 6th avenue bar scene and ended up in a place called Red Fez. We chose it because of the Middle Eastern decor and ended up loving it for their reasonably priced cocktails and awesome music. We hit the jackpot! It’s apparently one of Austin’s most popular bars on 5th. There was no cover and the DJs were spinning and scratching the old school hip hop! DJ Kurupt came over and bought us a round of Three Olives Vodka shots as a welcome to Austin. As an added bonus, he was spinning with one of Ludacris’ DJs JC. We weren’t expecting to stay all night but we were having so much fun we just shut the place down!
