The time seemed right for another short road trip, so a couple of months ago, I booked a downtown Hotel in Austin. At the time I made the booking, there were no specific reasons for the trip other than to get out of town with my Texas rodeo sweetheart. As it turned out, it was a little bit of a celebration also! Sylvia had a recent cardiac stress test and heart catheterization and got excellent news that there was no evidence of coronary occlusive disease and that her previous stents were wide open. It was the best possible result! Below, we are clowning around with the Santa Claus display in the lobby of University Hospital just before her procedure.


So off we went. The Buc-ees in New Braunfels seemed to be the perfect halfway place to stop both coming and going along the way to the Westin on 5th street in Austin. It was chosen for it's proximity to all the musical joints & bars that line 6th street. The first picture, below, is taken from our room window on the top 20th floor of the Hotel. The word "WESTIN" is actually backwards as it is reflected from the building across the street. There was a rooftop bar and pool practically just outside our door with magnificent views of the city. There are a couple of pictures of the beautiful lobby and one of the Frost Bank building close by.


The first night, I bought tickets to a show at the 04Center on South Lamar Blvd. It was a cozy room that held seats for about 125 people and there were a couple of local singers at the facility. Jade Marie Patek opened with many of her original songs. She actually had a beautiful voice and was quite talented. One song in particular that Sylvia liked (or at least I made her like...) was A GOOD ONE. It was a song about finally being with a good man after dating losers. I impressed upon her that THAT should be her theme song because she met me. She agreed 100% by saying, "Sure, honey, sure.. if you say so!"

Then Sunny Sweeney came on and did her set. She was great at telling humorous anecdotes about her songs. Terrific stage presence! Unfortunately, the night was tainted a little by the margaritas that we were drinking! They were fairly strong. I had two but Sylvia was whooping and a hollerin' and having a blast with the performers after downing 3 of those drinks. The problem was, we hadn't eaten anything before the show and on an empty stomach, she got a little tipsy! On the way home, I had to pull over twice to let her vomit in a parking lot. She looked miserable. We got home and fortunately, she went out fairly quickly with the words, "Never, again" eminating from her lips. Poor girl.

The next morning, we were refreshed and ready to begin again. As expected, she was quite hungry and fortuitously there was an outstanding restaurant adjacent to the hotel called Stella San Jac! We went in for their brunch which was delicious! We started with freshly made biscuits and develed eggs. Then had eggs, turkey bacon and hash browns! Really nice!

We started walking around downtown Austin visiting odd shops and souvenir places. We hit VooDoo Doughnuts, apparently a legend in downtown Austin and then wandered into the Lucky Lizard which housed the MUSEUM OF THE WEIRD.

It had 3 floors of exhibits and was a mix of Ripley's Believe It or Not and a Horror Wax Museum. Lots of strange things to see.

On our second night in Austin, we initially had planned to go bar hopping along 6th street, drinking and listening to music at different places. However, after the series of events from the night before, we realized that our drunken party nights might be coming to a close. So we chose the more gentle approach of music and dinner at the Broken Spoke. The Broken Spoke is somewhat of a legendary honky tonk in Austin with great singing and dance hall. We enjoyed chicken fried steak and BBQ while being entertained by Ian Stewart, a wonderful young performer who did a variety of new and old country tunes. Very talented.