Austin Part 2: My Home Away From Home

If you know me well or have been following my blog for awhile, you may now that I have a love for south Texas. (Last summer’s blog: Austin Calls Out My Inner Hippie.)  I’m particularly fond of Austin and always leave anticipating the day that I can return. As my blog post name says, Austin is my home away from home. My hippie side always comes out in full force when we’re there! Anyways…

Here are some highlights from our time there last week.

Cousins & Family: The most important part of our trip and what allows us to spend so much time in south Texas is our family. I loved seeing my two cousins: the boy in the top left and the little girl in the other 3 photos. Little kids are so precious, joyful, and so much fun to be around! Of course those children have parents who are my aunts and uncles and it’s always great to see them too. I love them all and am so blessed to be a part of such a wonderful family.

Top Left: We ate at a place called Chuys. I ordered chicken flautas and they were great! I love the fun and crazy atmosphere of that restaurant!

Top Right: Downtown by UT Campus on Guadalupe street. Just a street mural.

Bottom Left: Lunch at the Roaring Fork. I only ate half of the “Half-Ass Burger.” I tried. I really did.

Bottom Right: Balcony at the Oasis overlooking Lake Travis.

Amy’s Ice Cream. After lunch at the Roaring Fork we dropped by Amy’s Ice Cream. I was already stuffed, but I had to have a baby size of the Nutter Butter ice cream covered with chocolate sprinkles! It tasted just like Nutter Butters…I think because it had the actual cookie mixed with vanilla ice cream. Sooo yummy!

Right: One of my Aunt’s who lives in Austin picked us up breakfast one morning. What’s different about this breakfast is in the top right corner. It’s called Chilaquiles. Those are fried tortilla chips cooked in a red sauce. They were spicy, but I really liked them! My New Mexico taste buds can handle a lot of spice!

Left: On our way home we stopped in Fredericksburg, Texas at a BBQ joint. We each got brisket tacos and they were amazing! The brisket was finely chopped and full of flavor. We always have to enjoy a Big Red at least once on our summer Texas trips!

Dominican Joe! I visited my first coffee shop that made things with almond milk! I ordered a honey cream latte with almond milk (middle). My mom got a blended chai and my sister got a blended latte. Once again I was doing back flips in the parking lot because of my excitement of finally having an almond milk latte. This coffee shop was down Congress street by downtown Austin.

My sister mentioned how she didn’t enjoy being in that coffee shop because of the “weird” people in there. But I absolutely loved it and wished I could stay and hang out there regularly! Austin is one of those cities that makes my hippie inclinations come out a bit stronger than normal.

 

Tyler’s T-shirts. I love, love, love Tyler’s t-shirts and always like to add one or two to my collection. This time I got an over-sized turquoise-sky blueish shirt. I also got a long sleeve black shirt with Tyler’s in the colors of the Texas flag.

HEB! Is it weird I get excited about going to a grocery store? Anyways, I love HEB! They are awesome. At this one I ground some peanut butter and almond butter and got some coconut flour and sugar. I was one happy girl. If only there was an HEB here in New Mexico.

Shipley Do-Nuts. I may or may not have had Shipley donuts twice for breakfast this week. The first occasion I had a chocolate glaze and regular glaze with chocolate milk. On our drive home we stopped by and I had to get one that was “sparkly” as my cousin would say. There is nothing like a soft, fresh, warm donut. Mmmhmmm.

That does it for the second half of our Austin trip! It’s always my favorite trip we take of the year. We may not have done much after the X Games, but we enjoyed spending time with our family we don’t get to see as often as we would like. I’ve always wanted to live in the south Texas Austin area. Who knows if that’ll ever actually happen, but this time I left seriously wanting to move there. I guess we’ll see!  Have a marvelous Monday everyone!

How was your weekend? What city do you love to visit?