Our first morning in Austin got off to a late start thanks to the 2.30am arrival the night before. We finally managed to get downtown around midday and wandered along 6th Street in search of breakfast. We ate at a nice place whose name now escapes me and while the food was good it definitely didn't live up to "everything is bigger in Texas".

We were planning to meet up with a friend of Hannah's later in the day but in the meantime we explored a bit of the city. We soon found ourselves at the state Capitol building which was surrounded by a large park. I didn't realise that Austin was the state capital of Texas so it was a nice surprise.

We had a look at the visitor centre before getting to the Capitol building and saw some interesting items from the city's history such as the the bill that formally declared Texas's secession from the Union. This was the first time that we had really seen anything related to the Civil War, something I'd been looking forward to learning more about. Outside in the park was a large statue commemorating the states of the Confederacy and the order in which they joined. North Carolina was first with Texas coming in at seventh out of a total of eleven rebel states.

The impressive Texas Capitol Building was open to the public so we decided to go inside to escape the heat. We joined a tour that visited both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Interestingly the Texas Senate only meets once every two years for a session that lasts up to 120 days. This seemed odd to us as legislation must pass both the House and the Senate but I suppose it must work somehow.

The House of Representatives

There is a large dome in the centre of the building with portraits of all of the state governors on display below. There were some familiar faces...

We then met up with Hannah's friend who was with a friend of her own. It was a very hot day and after missing out on the Lyndon B Johnson presidential library (it closes at 5) we headed to a swimming hole a short distance from the city centre. Barton Springs is a man made swimming area that holds water flowing from four natural springs. There were hundreds of people swimming and lying on the grassy banks and the area had a really nice vibe. We could have stayed for hours but it was already late in the day and we were hoping to see some of the live music that Austin is famous for.

The freeways in Austin are designed around a concept called frontage roads where there will be a large multi lane one way street that sits on each side of the freeway and follows the same course. All on and off ramps to the freeway connect to the frontage road which then connects to other streets. In our short experience of this it proved to be the most unnecessary and confusing thing. The on ramps were often incredibly short with almost no visibility when merging. To make things worse the ramp would usually merge into a lane that led straight to an off ramp a short distance later. In practice this meant that in order to get onto the freeway one has to floor it up the on ramp and hope there is room and then immediately change lanes. Another issue with this set up is that it confuses the hell out of GPS navigation. Besides Philadelphia, Austin would have to be my worst driving experience of the trip.

Next up after a quick trip come to get changed was dinner at a place called Threadgil's for what turned out to be an expensive and fairly average dinner. Almost all of us got the speciality, chicken fried steak, which was basically just a battered deep fried piece of steak. I ate far too much cornbread and ended up feeling rather full...

After dinner we finally made it out to the famous 6th street. Unfortunately by now it was almost midnight and in Austin all bars are required to close at 2am. We never managed to find live music although we did visit a few interesting bars such as a multi level place made out of shipping containers, and another which was basically just a converted house. We were here when 2am rolled around and within five minutes the staff had pushed everyone out and that was that.

We stayed that night at our Motel6 again. Unfortunately we gave our Uber driver the address of the other Motel6 (the one we had actually booked for) and ended up heading in the complete wrong direction before we realised.

The next morning was a fairly dull affair. Highlights include a trip to the chemist, and a visit to a laundromat. We then drove on to Houston which I will cover next time.