Austin

Austin, Texas18th June - 23rd June:
Our next destination was Austin, Texas. It had been recommended to us as a lively University town with lots going on. After a 3 hour bus journey, we arrived at the bus station which was on the outskirts of town. Luckily, there was a bus which would take us right to our hostel and it only cost 50 cents. Once we checked in to the hostel, where we were in separate dorms, we headed into town to 6th street which we had been told was the main street for entertainment. After a short walk around, we found a bar where beer was only 1 dollar. We spent some time here before, and after, dinner at the Spaghetti Warehouse. The following day we visited the Texas State Capitol building which is slightly taller then the one in Washington, everything's bigger in Texas as they say. We found a sports bar to watch the Euro quarter final between Germany and Portugal where we met some other people from the hostel. Afterwards, we visited the Blanton Museum of Art near the university which had a good collection of modern work as well as some classical pieces. As the sun began to set, we headed to the bridge over the river where America's largest bat colony lives, and flies out from every evening at dusk. We sat by the banks of the river and watched 1.5 million bats fly out from under the bridge on their nightly search for food. It was very impressive. Then we headed back to the hostel and ate the left over dinner from the night before.
The next day the weather wasn't very good so we decided to go to a mall as we had a few things to get. We had a big buffet lunch while we were there. Back at the hostel we got chatting to a Mexican guy called Daniel who had just moved to Austin. He gave us a lot of advice on places to visit in Mexico. We then went out to see the bats again with him. This time we watched from on the bridge which was better as we were much closer to them. We walked up to 6th street again which was much busier (Fri night) and found a bar with some live bands, something Austin is well known for. The bands weren't great but we had a good night out and it was amazing to see just how busy the area was with partying students. On Saturday, we decided to spend the day at Barton Springs. A natural cool water spring which had been turned into a swimming pool. It took a while to get there as the Saturday bus service wasn't so good and by the time we arrived and found a spot on the grass to sit, they cleared the pool as there was a thunder storm approaching and a risk of lightning. We had to shelter from the rain for a while but finally got a chance to swim, the water turned out to be quite cold. The pool was cleared again after a while so we headed back to the hostel and relaxed by the lake outside. On Sunday morning we hung out at the hostel for a while, Richard was tired as one of the people in his dorm snored loudly all night. We watched the Spain v Italy game in the same sports bar as before and then went for a game of mini golf which Steph won, Richard almost making up for a terrible start. We had some food back at the hostel before getting an early night as we were picking up a hire car the next day to head to the beach of Galveston.

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