With the ACL music festival happening our first two weekends, we avoided the madness of Zilker Park.  Now that it was over we were free to venture out to that beautiful part of the city and fortunately, we had a tour guide!

Wally, who stayed with us in Palisade along with his Doberman, Lilac knows every inch of Austin and its beautiful outdoors activities; the man actually cleared his own trails in the area for more peaceful hiking.  Who better to go with…our first hike in Austin was fantastic!

On the way out to meet Wally we noticed that we passed Chuy’s – legendary Tex-Mex.  So on the way home it was a foregone conclusion that we’d have to stop there to replenish some calories after the hike.

Place is classic.

The hike was a nice warm up for the busy and active weekend we had teed up for Amy’s birthday.

On Saturday we rented a canoe from Rowing Dock and enjoyed a nice few hours on the Colorado River or what locals call Lady Bird or Town Lake.

It was awesome to be outdoors and seeing so many other people enjoying such a beautiful day.

There were some pretty official houses on the edge of the cliff overlooking the river; what do these people do to afford that??

After about three hours on the canoe we both worked up quite an appetite and headed to Chi’lantro to get their famed Kimchi fries along with some pretty awesome tasting tacos and wings.

Chi’lantro we will be back!

On the eve of Amy’s birthday we were home playing backgammon and gearing up to get to bed early so we would feel good for our planned hike the next day.  Waking up the next morning and getting ready for this hike felt great.  We both thanked our past selves for making the right call and not getting banged up the night before Amy’s big day.  Hello 32…

While there are not nearly as many options as Colorado for some solid hiking, Austin has an impressive amount of choices for a big city.  We chose a relatively challenging hike – RiverPlace Nature Trail – which was about 6 miles of constant incline and decline.

We were both grateful to have gotten back out into the nature.

After a few hours resting up we got ready for our dinner reservations at Uchiko.

Girl is looking good at 32!

We heard great things about Uchiko; it is a spinoff of Uchi where we ate a few years ago so we knew it would be good.  The restaurant being completely packed on a Sunday night confirmed our optimism before we had a single bite.

Be ready to drop some doe if you hit this place up.  That said, you get what you pay for; the food was delicious!

We had one more obligation to fulfill in this jam packed few days and that was Monday Night Football – Eagles v Giants baby.  Since we don’t have cable at our rental, there was no option except heading back to Mr. Tramps.

If you didn’t read the last post, this place is an awesome Philadelphia Eagles bar.  So awesome in fact, it gives you an option to order a cheesesteak in two different ways: Geno’s or Pat’s.  Only problem is they don’t know how to spell Geno’s!

Amazing week, incredible town and killer eats.  Oh yeh, the Eagles won!

Well  we’ve arrived in Austin and just like that we’ve started the next chapter of our amazing adventure.  Fittingly, it started with a bang!

Jordan was arriving to Austin late Thursday evening  (day after we arrived) so while waiting to pick him up we headed to the Flamingo Cantina to watch our old buddy Micah play some music.

The next day Sean (who was randomly in Austin for a conference) arrived and when Sean’s in town it’s ALWAYS interesting.

We all had a hankerin’ for some legit Austin BBQ and Lamberts came highly recommended.  Needless to say we munched out hard!

After leaving Lamberts with very full bellies we strolled to 6^th Street (Dirty 6 as the locals call it) to find some live music and ended up enjoying some Texas Country (I think I just made up that genre) at the Dizzy Rooster.

Sean wasn’t the only random to be in Austin on our first weekend. Frank and Joe happened to be in town so we left Dirty 6 and hit Rainey Street to meet those two hooligans at Bangers.  This place is a huge German style pub with an awesome outdoor section and fantastic beer.  At some point we NEED to hit it up for brunch too -the food looked awesome!

We rolled around to a few bars on Rainey and then headed back to Dirty 6 to meet Jeska and Jordan.  The night gets hazy from here and pictures are scarce, but I know we had a great time.

The next morning we nursed ourselves back to health with some of the best Cuban food I’ve ever eaten from the Cuban Sandwich Café – and yes, I’ve eaten Cuban in Miami!  This place is a hole in the wall that leads to heaven.

Jordan and Jeska, before heading to ACL, took us to “Jack’s Tower”, basically this guy’s house that has a sick view of Austin.

We hung out there and then got dropped off at South Congress where we enjoyed live music and bomb ass taco’s from Guero’s Taco Bar.

That night we hit tons of places, met up with Jordan, Jeska, Frank, Joe and ended the night at 5am.

Few! That was a wild weekend.

With some alone time, Amy and I decided to explore the Mueller District where we’d be posted up for the next 4 months.  What better place to start than Torchey’s Taco’s which is a good place to grab a drink and grub within walking distance of our house.

On our second weekend we hung out with Micah and his girl Jessa back at the Flamingo Cantina and watched Micah jam out with another Reggae band.

And while there were so many fun memories packed into the first two weekends a shining highlight was Mister Tramps.  Amy decided to catch up on some sleep and I rolled out to this self proclaimed Eagles bar in Austin and it did not disappoint.

There was an entire back room with three huge projector screens that was filled with wild Philadelphia fans and we watched the Eagles destroy the Saints.  This was great for everyone except for the lone (and brave) Saints fan that watched the game with us.  He was appropriately shamed.

Austin – YOU ARE COOL!