Day 11-June 5, 2016-Lazy AM (again), downtown Austin and a batty end to the day
Windy and sunny-warmer-90.
Spent the morning lazing around the RV. Drove into downtown Austin to the Capitol building. Gorgeous building with four floors of offices, a nice library inside and bright green sprawling lawns with statues and cannons outside. Lots of people out and about this nice day. From there we drove to 6th St., the “rowdier” side of Austin. They pride themselves on being the “Live Music Capital of the World”, although not many bands were playing on a Sunday afternoon. We heard at night they close the street down and it gets really busy. The slogan here is “Keep Austin Weird” and they try really hard. Lots of souvenir shops, bars, tattoo parlors and more homeless people than I’ve seen in most other inner cities. We went into Maggie Mae’s, one of the more well-known bars. It had a beautiful mural behind the bar and a lot of nostalgic posters and pictures. Most of the bars smelled like vomit, beer and pee. Been there, done that. A few blocks down we went into the Driskill Hotel, built in 1886. Very upscale. There’s also an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, combination movie theater and restaurant. Drove south a bit to Rainey St. where we heard there were a lot of craft beer houses and it was a bit more “sedate”. Rainey St. has a lot of small restaurants and shops, most of which are redone bungalows. The place was really crowded and parking was impossible so we remembered that we had some nice craft beer, big shade trees and comfy lawn chairs back at the RV. Harry and I both agree we like Nashville better than Austin for music. We had heard that there was another bat colony right here in Round Rock so after dinner we packed up our chairs and drove down to the I-35 underpass where there were only about 15 people sitting waiting for the bats. About 8:45 they started to stir and five minutes later there was a swarm of almost 2 million bats streaming from under the bridge. They kept coming and coming for over a half hour. So glad we got to see that. Back at the campground we got to hear and see the fireworks after the ballgame. Don’t know who won, though. Off tomorrow, but we had a great time in Austin.