Austin, Texas

First Stop: Downtown Food Tour

What better way can there be to start the exploration of a new town with a food tour that highlights the culinary scene with an enthusiastic and a knowledgeable guide.   

 Austin’s Eats Food Tour gives you an exclusive taste of the specialty shops and ethnic restaurants in Austin’s downtown area. The delicious food tastings that satisfy even the heartiest appetites. Plus you get an “insider’s view” of the culture, history and architecture that defines the “Keep Austin Weird” slogan.

My daughter and I enjoyed the variety of appetizers and drinks at four locations. Note sunflowers in the background. 

We  sampled cheese, cracker and meat tray, a variety of tacos, several Thai dishes, unusual cocktails,  food from a street food truck

ending with a stop for delicious scoop of ice cream. And I might also mention it was toasty warm today 97 degrees!!!

We noted they really like their buildings painted with murals and bright colors. 

Keep Austin Weird is the slogan adopted by the Austin Independent Business Alliance to promote small businesses in Austin, Texas. It is intended to promote local businesses and is inspired by comments made by Red Wassenich in 2000 while giving a pledge to an Austin radio station.

With 200 live music venues and as many as 2,000 bands and performing artists, Austin is considered the Live Music Capital of the World.

Every spring and summer about 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats migrate to Austin, giving the city North America’s largest urban bat colony. Every night these bats emerge from under the Congress Avenue Bridge.

Whole Foods began in Austin in 1978 when 25-year-old college dropout John Mackey and Rene Lawson Hardy borrowed $45,000 to open a small natural foods store. In 2017, Amazon paid $13.4 billion to acquire the upscale grocery chain.

Austin is home to America’s only Formula 1 race, the United States Grand Prix. The annual race takes place at the 3.4-mile Circuit of the Americas course located southwest of the city.

U.S. News & World Report named Austin the best place to live in the U.S. in 2017.

Constructed from sunset red granite, the Texas State Capitol building in Austin is the largest state capitol in the United States.

While the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the city’s population at 947,890 in 2016, Forbes named Austin as the fastest growing large city in the United States.