Gene spent all last week in Austin for a hearing, and since he never goes to Austin for work (this was the first time in his career), the boys and I decided to drive up on Friday afternoon and join him for the weekend!
I picked the boys up at noon and we ate lunch on the road. Milkshakes for the drive!
We arrived in Austin just before 4 pm and got settled into our room. For dinner, we tried Terry Black's Barbecue, which was just a few minutes from our hotel. It had rave reviews online and we all agreed that it was delicious!
On our way back to the hotel, we realized that we were staying right at the Congress Avenue Bridge, home to the largest urban bat colony. We joined the throngs of people on the bridge at dusk to watch the bats stream out from underneath. It is an incredible sight! There are 1.5 million bats here, compared to only 250,000 at Houston's Waugh Street Bridge colony.
Nightwing sculpture by artist Dale Whistler
Crazy hair on the bridge --> helping "Keep Austin Weird!"
After a good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast, we began our Saturday morning adventure with a visit to the Bullock Texas State History Museum. Will and I had visited last year for the fourth grade field trip, but Gene and Henry had never been before. It's a fantastic museum, and we got in free with our Shelburne Museum reciprocal membership!
La Salle's ship, La Belle
Come and take it!
Next up, we crossed the street to visit the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas (also free with the reciprocal membership!). When I was in grad school, I spent a lot of time with my museum studies classes in this museum -- but since I graduated many, many years ago, there's a new building that I had not yet visited. I was so glad to finally explore it! The Blanton has collections in European, Latin American and contemporary art. We split up to explore -- Gene to the European galleries while the boys and I explored the contemporary exhibits.
Our favorite collection in the Curiouser exhibit of works by artist Nina Katchadourian was Sorted Books. The artist visits peoples' homes and sorts books into groups so that the titles on the spines create sentences and riddles. It was a fascinating, engaging and creative project that the three of us thoroughly enjoyed.
At the end, visitors were invited to create their own sorted book projects. Here are some of ours:
We also explored upstairs. This installation is called Mission/Missions by Cildo Meireles and was quite lovely.
After a morning of museums, we visited Book People, which is Texas's largest independent book store. We are book people for sure, so we came home with a stack of new books for the boys.
After a late lunch at Threadgill's, we headed back to the hotel for a rest followed by pool time. Our big adventure of the evening was heading out to Jester King Brewery for beer and pizza. This is one of our favorite spots in Austin and we go nearly every time we're in town!
After pizza, the boys were still hungry, so I suggested Amy's Ice Cream, but Will really wanted pie. Thanks to Gene and Google, we found Tiny Pies, which happened to be on our way home and was exactly what we needed.
Individual little pies = perfect for hungry boys! Gene even got into the spirit of things with a spinach empanada.
Sunday was Mother's Day, and you know this mama loves nothing more than a good hike with her family. We packed up and were out of the hotel pretty early, so we headed to McKinney Falls State Park, which is just 15 miles southeast of downtown Austin and on our way home. It was a mild weekend with cool mornings and evenings, so Sunday morning was the perfect time to get outside for a short hike.
The park is gorgeous but the trails are not well marked and we found ourselves lost and backtracking quite a bit.
500-year-old Old Baldy
We finally found ther Upper Falls! What a beautiful spot.
We all enjoyed McKinney Falls and it's a park we'd love to visit again!
Another favorite spot on the drive back to Houston is the Berdoll Pecan shop. This is Ms. Pearl the Squirrel, and she is 14 feet tall, making her the tallest squirrel statue in the world (goes well with the giant pistachio we saw in New Mexico!).
We always put Gene in charge of finding us good lunch spots, and this time, he found us Hank's Express in downtown La Grange. The boys got soup, salad and sandwiches, but Gene and I tried the daily special, which was superb. Fried or baked chicken with noodles, stuffing, copper pennies (a Czech carrot dish) and green beans. It was fantastic! Homemade pie for dessert, of course.
After Gene's busy travel schedule, it was so nice to get away, unwind a bit, and spend some time together, just the four of us.
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