After yesterdays long drive of 800+ km we wanted/needed a bit of a break. It was a realitively early start at the Days Inn Austin Cross roads hotel, with the usual waffles for brakfast.
we had planned out a few places to check out during the, trying to keep it as long key as we could. First stop was the Texas Thrift shop Paul wanted to check out, he has been wanting cowboy themed clothes since Las Vegas.
Not much was found but it was cool to see what these places were like. The day really was jumping from thrift shop to record store and some food inbetween.
We were Googling up a storm trying to find cool old places to visit, a lot of shops had closed or moved since they were listed on Google. But as usual we kind of just stumbled across a record store or two on the way to other places. I ended up getting a bunch of records that were either really expensive at home or hard to find.
We found ourselves down on the Colorado river that ran through the city centre was. This was the same river that we saw a few states back at the Grand Canyon, its pretty amazing to see something that big cross such a big distance.
On the riverside we found the texas blues man himself, Stevie Ray Vaughan.The statue was put up in 1993 by the family foundation and located at the intersection of Town Lake Hike and Bike Trail. It was also a pokestop, which was amusing to watch all the idiots wandering around.
After getting confused again in the Austin traffic we finally got to South Austin where a lot of the record stores, thrift shops and food places were.
While I wander around record stores looking for things on my list Paul wandered the thrift shops.
Right across the road from these shops we spotted a place called Polvos, a mexican food spot I had seen on Yelp eariler but didn’t look into where it was. The food was incredible and possiblely some of the best food we have had all trip. I ended up getting the Quesadilla Compuestas which was amazing.
Once we were completely full ( I couldn’t even finished mine ) we headed up to Congress Ave, another south Austin spot with supposedly good shops and record stores. We didn’t end up finding anything but it was a cool to just get out and about. We ended up getting caught in massive flash floods though, a warning even came over our phones.
We accepted defeat and retreated to the hotel, but not before heading to the liquor store. Paul ended up buying the worlds biggest bottle of rum for next to nothing and we both got a few beers for tonight.
Tonight was the night we get to see Ume live. Ume is a band that we discovered a while ago and have listened to ever since, when we were planning our trip we we realised that they just happened to be playing only on the day we were in Austin, these uncanny things just keep happening to us.
Ume was playing as part of Pennyfest 2016 at the Empire Control Room and Garage. It was an awesome venue with two stages, one inside and one outside.
We didn’t realise at first it had two stages, and just thought it was really quiet. Nope, everyone was just outside listening to Quiet Company. This band really rocked out, you could hear all the players and they held a lot of energy through the whole set.
Then 11.30pm came around and we wandered inside to see who we came to see, Ume. A 3 piece band from Austin that has a massive sound. Lauren Larson has one of those unique voices that goes from mellow to full on attack from one moment to the next. One of the mosy explosive guitarist/singers you will ever see, it was wicked!
The venue was alot more intimate then we were expecting, but it worked out well as well got to talk the Lauren and Eric and get a photo with them. Paul managed to get the set list signed which I was a bit jealous of.
The venue closed up after both the final bands finished, so we headed back to the hotel via Taco Bell and called it a night. One awesome night.
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