Zilker Park, The Hotel, Hula Hut (and other thoughts on Austin's food)

I know, I know... enough about Austin, already.  I feel the same way.  But when one takes over 300 photos of one's family's non-weekend getaway... there tends to be several blog posts that come of it.  Naturally.  And when one is busy with a gazillion other projects the week after the said non-weekend getaway, it sometimes takes one a week to get all of those posts posted. Rest assured, my friends, this is my final post on our time away in Austin and the surrounding area.  Until next time, of course,  that "one" visits the lovely city again anyway.

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On the afternoon of our "Austin Day" (after we had spent the morning at the capitol), we went to lunch at what we vote our favorite restaurant of the trip.  It is called Home Slice Pizza, and oh my goodness, it was marvelous!  We sat at the bar where we could have a front row view of the girl that was throwing pizza dough and watched the delicious pies being made right before our very eyes... which inspired Corey & me to order something that we would not have otherwise ordered.  A pizza with sausage, red peppers, and ricotta cheese.  We don't even really like ricotta cheese that much, but mercy! it was delicious!  If you are ever in Austin, you must visit Home Slice Pizza!

After lunch we visited Zilker Park.  My sister has mentioned it several times, and it was fun to check it out for ourselves.  We took a look at the Barton Springs Pool but opted to go back to the hotel for a swim after a train ride around the park.

Cooper wore his goggles the whole time "because it was sunny".

Seriously - even a ride on a kiddie train while on a mini-vacation can do wonders for a marriage.  Gotta keep life interesting!

~ brothers ~

After the train ride, we went back to the hotel for a swim in the pool.

~ the view from our hotel room window ~

On our last day there, we loaded up then headed to lunch at Hula Hut (a must when you visit Austin, evidentially).  We sat on the deck while we waited for our table then went inside for lunch and some air-conditioning.  Both were wonderful!  We loved the atmosphere here, and the food was really good too.


After lunch, we went downtown for a little while and the kids got souvenirs at my friend Stephanie's mom's store on Congress Ave.  Then, we made a stop at Hey Cupcake for to-die-for cupcakes that we ate in the car on our drive home.

So, if  you can't tell... it was a great little get-away for our little family!  I am so thankful that Corey and I share the desire to create memories and invest time with our kids.  We have found that if we are creative enough we can make super-great memories without a ton of time or money, and there truly is no other thing on earth that I would rather do!  

Thank you to those of you that gave us ideas for things to do in Austin.  When I posed the question on Facebook, I got lots of input - everything that we did came from those ideas.  There are still several other places that people recommended that we will try to visit in the future.  I thought that this was funny --- when I asked for Austin ideas on Facebook, almost every idea included a restaurant.... and every restaurant that we tried was GREAT!  You people know how to eat!  And Austin knows how to feed its people!  :)