Day 2.41: Austin, TX

We woke up to catch Abe’s thirty-fourth and last movie of the festival, this one held at a satellite venue, the AFS Cinema. We mostly enjoyed the bizarre Sister Aimee, and it was nice to go to a less crowded theater with plenty of parking.

We drove about ten minutes to Veracruz All Natural, which was recommended by our friend Naomi, to meet Jess, who Abe went to high school with and hadn’t seen in more than a decade. It was great to catch up! The food was also delicious – the tacos had great veggies and flavor, though they were hard to keep together.

Our next stop was at Coffee Bean, of course, the last time that Abe would have it on this trip. We drove to the very nearby LBJ Presidential Library, where we became annual members so that we could start visiting the libraries all around the country. We spent about two hours walking through the library and learning about what LBJ did while in office – this is an impressive place! We went back to the hotel and packed about half of our stuff into the car since it had been practically empty for the entire time we spent in Austin. We headed out to Hopdoddy, a famed burger place that was insanely crowded when we pulled up. We thought we were going to have to pay $15 for the first hour of parking but were relieved to learn that two hours at the garage behind the restaurant came free with validation. We did nearly get charged though since Abe wasn’t paying close attention to the clock, but we eventually got out just in the nick of time. Arielle got to pose with a very appealing poster before we met Jon, who Abe had seen a week earlier and knew Abe would comment about his recent haircut, and his friend Chris, who was very nice and asked some great insightful questions about what we did. The line moved more quickly than we expected, and it was completely worth the wait! Abe got a bison burger that hilariously came open-faced, and Arielle got the impossible burger with no onions and extra pickles. Chris was the only one who got a milkshake which he said was delicious. We also saw a waiter carrying a crazy number of dishes on his arm.

After a thoroughly satisfying meal, we walked across the street to another Amy’s location, where we both got the orange chocolate chip, which was better in sample than it was in execution. Arielle got 3 scoops in a tiny size and put it on a cone: orange chocolate chip, Mexican vanilla, and Oreo.

We drove back to hotel and finished packing everything, ready to depart the next morning for a new city for the first time in a while.

Approximate number of miles covered: 11