We’ve been back in Louisville for about a week, so it’s time to tie up the loose ends of our travels for 2016.
Austin Report Card
| Food | A- |
| Beer | A |
| Walkability | B |
| Cost | B- |
| Weather | A |
| Parks | B+ |
| Activities | B+ |
| Overall | B+ |
We’d heard great things about Austin, so when we were at a loss of what city to go to for the end of the year we thought: “When else would we ever live in Texas?” and went for it. Initially we were going to go right after Denver, but we swapped it for Minneapolis in order to avoid those Northern winters.
Austin is known for many things, most notably music, but their barbecue and Tex Mex rank highly as well. We were not disappointed with the food scene we encountered which ran the gamut from the standards (chili, barbecue, Mexican) to Indian, Chinese, and Greek. [Check out our post solely on beer and food for some of our favorites!] While we didn’t get to as many breweries as we have in previous cities, we visited a handful all with really solid brews – Jester King, Live Oak, and Hops and Grain to name a few. While those were all great, the real star of the beer scene for us was Craft Pride, a Texas-only beer bar on Rainey street with more options than we can name and a taste for every palate.
Austin gave us some amazing weather the short time we were there, and we loved living right on Lady Bird Lake (aka the Colorado River).Unfortunately Snickers didn’t like running in the grass very much because there were a lot of burrs that got stuck in her paws, but she loved splashing around in the lake after a run.While there weren’t a lot of parks around, a quick drive could get you into nature. We did like the couple of hikes we went on, but the terrain wasn’t variable enough and the trails weren’t accessible enough to get in a weekday run. We definitely missed the terrain of Oregon and Colorado and even our bi-weekly trail runs in Minneapolis. Austin is fairly walkable and we were able to easily access downtown, South Congress, and East Austin from our location, but you definitely need a car to really get around.
Would we go back? Absolutely! We would love to experience some of the music scene that we just didn’t get around to while we were there and it was just an all-around cool city. Would we live there? Maybe! We really liked the weather and the vibe, but we’ve heard the summers can be brutally hot and humid.
[We didn’t take a lot of photos the last few weeks here, so enjoy some of our favorites]
mattandbethtravels 