Tuesday March 10, 2015

We were late up this morning. We had some chores to do, primarily washing. We had bought some NixWax wash for our jackets and some waterproofing stuff for the jackets as well. I waterproofed each jacket separately, hopefully it will help during the next rain we encounter. The weather was overcast, but warm and I was able to hang all the jackets outside to dry.

We eventually left for our sight-seeing of the Capitol building and surrounding downtown at about 12:30.

The Capitol Building and grounds were really nice and grand. Ralf took loads of pictures, I have created a gallery below.

One of the funniest statues was the school children. The info on the plaque stated that there were six children, there were only five. Typical school outing you always lose one kid!

The outside of the building had a replica statue of liberty and on the building adjacent had the original Independence.

We walked to another store which may have had keen sandals, they did but not the cycling sandals. Behind the store was Castle Hill an area where grafitti is welcomed.

Austin also has the bicycle rental scheme we have seen in other major cities around the world.

We walked back to Hilary and Sam’s place wandering through the neighbourhood and through an area called Swede Hill, which had some interesting houses. This area (the east end) of Austin was the first area where black people were allowed to buy homes at the turn of the century. They were only allowed to buy and live in this area.

It is now changing some of the old houses are being converted or torn down and rebuilds. There were some very quirky houses.

We also discovered that the music festival South by South West starts in Austin this week-end. This is a festival where start-up bands and named bands play in Austin at a variety of venues. Some of them are free and others are charged. Ralf knew all about it, I was clueless. He wished he had known it was on and we could have planned on being in Austin during this time. However, accommodations are at a premium, even the youth hostels are booked.

Highway 35 runs through Austin, it is always busy.