Eating our way through Austin (Part 2)

June 26th & 27th

The next morning we were ready to get out and check out a great breakfast place, Gourdough's Public House. Oh my gosh, this place. It is known for the donuts and when the Dirty Plucker showed up at the table, I am pretty sure our jaws hit the floor.

We really enjoyed everything about this place. The wait staff was so fun, the atmosphere was very lively and playful and the food was great.

Again after a filling meal in the city, it was time to walk some of the donut off by heading to the City Wide Garage Sale. This was a cute antique market that had all kinds of great finds. We all came home with stories of things we had seen from our childhood as well as a few prized possessions that we couldn't bare to leave without.

We also took the afternoon to find some of Austin's famous art work around the city and since it was super hot, this was a great way to stay out of the heat during mid day.

Another great way we found to bet the heat was hanging out at Haymakers  for drinks & appetizers. It was here that we realized how difficult it was to get a weekend favorite drink, Austin Eastciders Pineapple cider.

So we decided to make it our mission to find more for our afternoon event. I think in the end, we drove miles and miles to a half dozen different locations trying to find the cider as well as called quite a few places. In the end, we were able to find a six pack shortly before we headed to the Little Longhorn Saloon.

The Little Longhorn Saloon has an event every Sunday night that if you are ever in Austin, you have to see to believe. It is Chicken Shit Bingo and it is exactly what you would think it would be.

In the blazing heat, we hung out, drink our super special Pineapple cider and waited for a chicken to poop in a cage. So let me explain a little more. I am not sure how this all got started, but people from all over come to buy a random $2 ticket for a square on a chicken coop floor. They then sprinkle the floor with chicken feed and put a chicken in the cage and wait. When the chicken poops, whichever square it poops on, wins the pot of money. If memory servers, the quickest the chicken as pooped is less then 30 seconds and the longest the chicken has held out is close to 2 hours. For us, the chicken wanted us to get our full $2 and almost broke the record for waiting the longest to poop.

So for almost two hours, we hung out, laughed at what we were doing, enjoyed the crazy crowd and live music inside. Since the chicken took so long to do their business during the first round, we weren't willing to risk going for round two so we headed on to our next activity but were super excited that we had the chance to play and experience something so hilarious.

We were all really excited for our evening plans and rushed over to Cap City Comedy Club to make sure we could get the right seats before the show started but we were a little too early so headed down the street to grab a quick dinner at Twisted Root Burger Company before the show started.

Cap City Comedy Club was hosting the Stand Up NBC show. It wasn't the actual show but all the comedians were competing on the show so they all brought their A game in were hilarious. It was a great night of laughs and great friends.

We were super bummed Monday morning when we got up and knew we were having to leave so in typical fashion, we stalled our drive back by going to eat. This morning, Mathis & Nicki introduced us to Touchy's Tacos for breakfast tacos.

This was yet another place that I wish I didn't know existed. Just so good. We spent more time eating, talking and stalling. Our weekend when so quickly and we had such an amazing time that we weren't ready to go.

We slowly made our way to the Austin airport where Jed & I picked up a rental car to head up to Dallas for our flight later that day. As we headed north, we were going to drive right through the campus of Baylor University and Jed has know Jeromy from Baylor Vision for years so we decided to drop in and see him and their facilities. Thankfully Jeromy was there and had the time to give us a tour of their offices and the basketball facility.

After leaving Baylor, we made a quick stop at In N Out since we won't be seeing those for a while and then headed over to the Dr Pepper Museum. We love Dr. Pepper so we felt as if we had to take a few hours to learn and taste Dr. Pepper.

It was a great little museum with lots of potential but we were starting to run tight with time so we grab a Dr. Pepper float (way better then a Coke float) and hit the road.

Thankfully we made it to the Dallas airport with plenty of time. It was great until we hit delay after delay. The second delay caused us to miss our connecting flight and instead of risking sleeping in the airport for the evening, we got our flights rescheduled for the next morning and headed to a airport hotel for the night. It was slightly disappointing since we could have had more time with friends, but we had a great time hanging out and finding local pizza in the hotel for the night.

We absolutely loved our time in Austin with awesome friends and we can not wait for our next trip out there. So many more experiences and restaurants we have to try! Mathis & Nicki, thank you for a fabulous weekend!

Eating our way through Austin (Part 1)

June 24th & 25th

We could not wait to go out to Austin to visit our friends, Nicki & Mathis. The last time we headed to Texas to visit they were living in New Braunfels and we spent a long weekend exploring there and San Antonio. This Texas adventure put us in the center of Austin with a great city to explore with great friends.

We ended up flying into Dallas instead of Austin and Mathis & Nicki were gracious enough to drive the 3 hours to pick us up. As they picked us up they had a few plans up their sleeves as soon as we got on the road back to Austin.

Our first surprise stop was In N Out! Do they know us or what?! We were so incredibly excited to find ourselves in one of our favorite fast food places.

We weren't on the road long before they introduced us to another must stop/must eat right off the interstate at the Little Czech Stop.

This place was great and I was already wishing I had brought more stretchy pants for this trip.

That evening we headed out to the local area where we first walked to grab a drink at Indian Roller Roadhouse.

After spending some time there we decided to head up the street to grab dinner at Moontower Saloon. This was such a neat place. It was a mostly outside venue with food trucks, drinks and cornhole. We spent the evening here play games and enjoying the local vibe of Austin.

Knowing that we were going to get up stupid early the next morning to experience one of the must do's in Austin, we called it a night pretty early.

We were sitting in line at Franklin Barbecue by 6am and we were surprisingly far back in the line at that hour. We were as prepared as we could be for the long wait ahead of us. Nicki, Jed & I got our base set up while Mathis headed out to get us breakfast tacos from Juan in a Millions. SO GOOD. It was great to watch as tons of others came to join the line, unloading coolers, cornhole boards, radios and chairs. It was wild!

After a few hours, Nicki & I decided to go out exploring to find caffeine. We wandered until we found Vintage Heart Coffee. Such a great little local coffee shop.

When we got back, I was met with a great surprise. Jed’s cousins Lucy and Manolo surprised us and stopped by to say hi. They have recently moved to Austin and saw Jed posting from Franklin’s and decided to stop by to say hi. It was so fun.

Franklin’s doors opened at 11am and Jed & I started to get excited. We were surprised that there was little movement around us. Little did we know that we still had hours to wait before getting in the door.

Passing time

Finally at about 1pm we were in the doors! We were shocked at how small the place was but they had a great system. We ordered way too much food and found a little table for the four of us. I figured this experience would we a bit of a waste on me since I don’t eat 99% of the things that they make but we got a small amount of turkey just to try and I am here to tell you it is by far the absolute best turkey I have every had and it was worth every minute we had to wait in line. We would hands down wait in this line again for this food. Just amazing!

One of the main Franklin guys

Now that we were sufficiently stuffed, we headed back to the house to get cleaned up and regroup for the rest of our day.

We decided we needed to do something that would allow us some moving around so we headed over to the Hope Outdoor Gallery. Talk about graffiti galore! This place was so great. We climbed around the area, taking tons of pictures, looking at all the art and watched artists paint more. No surprise to anyone but we loved it. Loved, loved, loved it. So any stories behind the art, so many encouraging messages, so many inspiring designs. I just love how art can invoke such emotion and how it can impact individuals in such different ways.

We even had the opportunity to tag the area with our hashtag.

The rest of the evening Nicki & Mathis introduced us to two fun night life areas. Our first stop was Rainey Street Historic District. We visited Bangers first. Bangers is known for 30 different sausages and 104 beers of tab. I don’t know how we did it, but we got more food. We swore we weren’t going to eat again for days after Franklin’s but somehow we were eating again. It was good and a great atmosphere. 

After some time at Banger’s we walked to streets to check it all out and made our way into Icenhauer's to watch a little of the World Cup.

Our last destination was 6^th Street. We were so excited to get down there early enough before the mad rush and were able to find great parking. We walked the street just taking it all in, different little shops to check out, restaurants and bars. Once of the things 6^th Street is known for is the Flaming Dr. Peppers. Jed & I had no idea what they were but we knew we had to try one. We were pretty confused when we walked into 2 different bars as asked to no avail. One’s response was “we aren’t set up for that yet”.  After a few tries Touche’ was willing to make us a few Flaming Dr. Peppers. The process of making a Flaming Dr. Pepper is not easy to explain and truly needs to be experienced in person.

I will tell you, it tastes just like a warm Dr. Pepper and is not a drink that you sip.

Mathis & Jed were nice enough to take one for the team and order another round so we could get a few blurry pictures of the experience.

Now that we had crossed that of our Must Do in Life list, we decided to find a place to hang out, play some pool and people watch for above. As we looked for a place to hang out we ran across VooDoo Doughnut! I know what you are thinking, how can you eat anything else. But it was VooDoo Doughnuts and we had to try them even if we had to wait 30 plus minutes in the line in late June when there air conditioning was broken in the heart of Texas.  

We eventually found a great second floor bar that had huge windows where Nicki & I people watched as 6^th Street turned into a walking street with crowds of people from all walks of life. Jed & Mathis were having a super interesting experience with a very high pool player that I could never do justice writing out here.

It wasn’t long before we started to wonder about where we had parked and thought we should make sure the car was okay when we watched it being towed right in front of us. Nicki quickly got Mathis attention as he sprinted down the steps to stop the tow truck while we gathered all our belonging, settled up with our bill and quickly followed after Mathis.

Mathis did a great job with his quick reaction and was able to get the car off the tow truck in the middle of a crowded now walking street and Nicki did a great job navigating all streets with tons of people to get us home from an incredibly memorable day.