AND THEN THERE WAS BBQ.... TEXAS STYLE BBQ

Friday, 11 January 2013 – Another beautiful day dawned in Austin (although we weren’t awake to see it) so after packing our bags and departing our great stay at the Intercontinental, we headed to the Hideaway Theatre Café for a tea and breakfast burrito which seems to be the standard brekkie choice. No celebrity sightings this time for Justyn! After some souvenir hunting, we joined the highly recommended Austin Overtures Tour which takes in Austin and the surrounding Hill Country in 90 minutes. Maggie was our wonderful guide who was very entertaining and informative and we saw a lot of the surrounding areas including the Historic Downtown, Texas Capitol Complex, the University of Texas, Old East Austin, and the Texas Hill Country in West Austin – areas we just would not see otherwise.

Texas University - Longhorns College NFL stadium

Here are a few of the best fun and interesting facts we learned about Austin, Texas!:

• The Austin, Texas state capitol building is the largest state capitol building in the U.S. and is made from Texas pink granite. 
• Austin is home to one of the largest college universities in the nation. The current enrolment is over 50,000 students and 24,000 faculty and support. Famous UT Alumni include: Walter Cronkite, Matthew McConaughey, Renee Zellweger, and Farrah Fawcett. • 
• Austin was originally called Waterloo, has an average of 300 days sunshine per year and is the 13th largest city in the US! 

 After enjoying our tour with Maggie, we were going to stay with really good family friends of Justyn’s who live in Austin. Living not far from SoCo, Kay picked us up in her zoomy Prius (lots of Prius’ in Austin!) and we settled in for an afternoon of catching up before her husband Dave came home with the fixings for his World Famous Margheritas and a variety of Fat Yak and Shiner Bock local Texan beers. We were pretty keen for some Texan BBQ so Kay and Dave took us to their favourite bbq place Salt Lick BBQ at Driftwood, just outside Austin.

(l-r) Carolyn, Kay, Justyn & Dave at Salt Lick BBQ

The food!

The most awesomest BBQ menu!

We ordered the ‘family style’ serving which included all you can eat (YES!!!) brisket, sausage and pork ribs (AWESOME!!!), warm potato salad, coleslaw and the best bread EVER! Finger licking deliciawesomezingous!!! After we had eaten our fill, I just had to find some room for a bowl of peach and blackberry cobbler! Returning to Kay and Dave’s, there was time and room for one of Dave’s World Famous Martini’s!!