Austin, Texas

Keepin’ Austin Weird

So, that’s the motto of the town where we spent Tracie’s bachelorette weekend. And we did see some weird things!!

Most of us arrived on Thursday night. Tracie, Shannon, Jen and Pam arrived Thursday afternoon and we lucky enough to see Vince Young at Fox & Hound while watching the Texas game. The rest of us unfortunately arrived too late! The bar pretty much cleared out after Texas won, I reckon because it was Thursday night. Then we ended up going to this really random dance club, where a 60 year old guy was bustin’ a move on the dance floor like nobody’ business. He pretty much cleared the dance floor it was so scary!!

Friday, we got up and had an overpriced breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Then, we headed out for S. Congress Street to do some shopping. It was some boutiques and a lot of vintage shops. I bought a cool leather wrist band with a green star in it. It’s pretty cool if I do say so myself! Then, we headed to the Hula Hut, which is a restaurant on the river, recommended by more than one source. We didn’t end up eating until 3:00, but we were all very hungry, so we ate pretty well. After that, it was time to head back to the hotel to get ready for dinner (Eating again already?!?!) We headed out to Z Tejas, which had excellent Tex-Mex cuisine, including the Wild Mushroom enchiladas that I ordered. The only mishap was Laura’s steak which had to be sent back three times to be cooked to medium, thank goodness it was camped without even asking!!

After dinner, we headed out to 6th Street, where all the college bars are located. The street was even closed off!! We started at the Logan Lounge, which was kind of quiet when we got there, but it got pretty crowded when we left. Then, we headed to the Chugging’ Monkey (based on a recommendation from the waitress), which was kind of a dive bar, but they were playing good music and we got to see the last second shot that sent the Upon game into overtime. (The whole bar went crazy!!) Then, we headed to the Dizzy Rooster (made famous by the Real World.), which was fun and very loud and crowded. Tracie did a little dancing on the bar. Laura, Shannon, Stacy and I headed over to another bar because it was just too loud in there. We met some guy who claimed to be a Michigan State cheerleader, but he wasn’t gay. He was just a little bit strange, so we ditched him! Stacy and I ended up going home after that because we were exhausted!!

When we got back to the hotel, our key didn’t work because it had been deactivated, so we had to call Laura and Shannon to make sure they could get in! What a fiasco! So, then everyone else came back and had a little party in our room and ordered pizza, so I didn’t get to sleep as early as I would have liked, but oh well! I did get to sleep in on Saturday.

Saturday, we headed over to the University of Texas for a tour of the Tower. We went to this place called Which Witch for lunch and it was really good!! J I was like a cross between Wa-wa and Potbelly’s. Yummy! We did the tour which consisted of them talking to use for about 10 minutes and then standing at the top for about 30 minutes. It was interesting to see, though, and it was a beautiful day out!!! Most everyone went back to the hotel to go to the pool, but Shannon and I set off on a mission to find a tiara or something for Tracie to wear. We found the perfect princess outfit at Toy Joy, a toy store (for children!!) complete with a sparkly tutu, a wand, a beaded tiara and wings!! It was a successful shopping trip.

Before dinner, we opened presents and played a game where Jen and Pam had called Matt (Tracie’s fiancé) to ask 10 questions and Tracie had to guess what his answers were. The best answer was to the question “What is Tracie’s most annoying habit?” And Matt said “Her intense obsession with Ohio State football. And she didn’t even go to school there.” That was pretty funny! For dinner, we headed to The Roaring Fork, which was EXCELLENT! I had a great salad and fabulous pork tenderloin. Everyone was very satisfied with their meal. We didn’t get to the bars until around 11, which was a late start!! We went to the Warehouse District, which is more where the people our age hang out. We started out the Logan Lounge, where we had two impromptu risqué dances, one from an attractive guy and one from a very overweight guy, which was so odd!!! And then we had a guy who just wanted someone to do the Rumba with him. We volunteered Tracie, and he got all upset when she stopped after about 60 seconds. Where did these people come from? That was like WAY weird (They are definitely living up to the motto!!) We then headed to a couple of other bars and ended up on 6th Street again. All in all, a fun evening!!

The worst part of the whole trip was the inability to find a cab on Saturday night. It was pretty ridiculous! 4 of us hung back from the group and we ended up taking one of those rickshaw things halfway and then walking the rest of the way. Everyone else walked back, the entire 45 minutes! That was really annoying!!!! The rickshaw guy would have taken us further, but there was no way he would be able to peddle the four of us up the hill to get to the hotel!!

I was in the first group to leave around 9:45 on Sunday morning, but I had a great time in Austin (minus the lack of cabs!!), but most of all I think Tracie had a blast, which was the whole point, right?