The Blans: Austin

For some reason we struggle to get out of town for anything besides visiting family. Well, I guess that's the reason. We use our vacation time and resources for traveling to Kentucky instead of for vacations - one of the cons to living so far away. Anyway, we had our first family vacation last week to Austin, TX. Sorry, everyone, but Kentucky isn't quite vacation. :)

Even though Austin is only three hours away, we tried really hard to make it feel like vacation, and Austin made it easy to do. People have been telling us for years how cool Austin is. Actually, they've been telling us how weird Austin is, and how much we'd love it because it's our kind of weird. We loved it so much that Stephen said the whole time that he was putting in job applications and house hunting. I kept reminding him that real life there would look very similar to real life here. I still haven't convinced him.

Anyway, we LOVED Austin, and I think it's safe to say the kids LOVED vacation. Here are some of the highlights.

Playing on the monkey bars at Zilker Metropolitan Park. One thing that makes Austin so cool is that there are parks and running/biking trails all over the city. It seems impossible to be inactive there. Being outdoors and on the move is the way of life.

On the Zilker Zephyr - a miniature train that takes a scenic route through the park, through tunnels and under bridges.

Waiting for the Congress Avenue bats to make their appearance.

Austin is home to the largest urban bat colony in North America. They live under this bridge, and every evening around dusk they emerge in search of food for their baby bats. People line the bridge and sit on the grass below the bridge to watch them. We chose the grass.

There they are!

Another great thing about Austin is the food. Not only do many restaurants pride themselves in buying local, fresh products, but there are food trucks throughout the city. We went to a couple of the restaurants people recommended, but our favorites turned out to be the food trucks. Kebabalicious served Turkish style wraps (in Turkish, it's a durum), and I think it was the best Turkish food we've had in America, although it might compete with the Middle Eastern Market down the road from us.

If Korean BBQ and Mexican cuisine had a love child, it would be named Chi'lantro. The Chi'lantro food truck was featured on "Heat Seekers" on the Food Network, and their food is a Korean/Mexican fusion. They serve Korean BBQ tacos and burritos. Incredible!

Stephen found Evie like this one morning - sleeping completely inside her sleeping bag. I think the biggest treat for Nate and Evie was staying in a hotel! They loved it and it was pretty much all they talked about.

And we did have a really cool hotel. We stayed in a green hotel, so we swam in a salt water swimming pool, drank organic fair trade coffee, ate an organic breakfast with vegetarian options, and were free to pick anything we wanted from the fruit and nut trees around the property. Seriously.

The most disappointing thing we did was visit the Lyndon B. Johnson presidential library and museum. It's being renovated, so they only had a couple exhibits open inside. However, outside they had this replica of an ancient statue found in Mexico built by the Olmecs. Not sure what it has to do with LBJ...