We started out today by visiting the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, located to the southwest of Austin. It originally opened in 1982, though the new grounds and buildings were opened in 1995.

It’s really nicely set up. Beautiful buildings include a vistor center, gift shop, cafeteria, and administrative buildings. There are a series of formal gardens, along with several hiking paths. Plus, there is a tower that you can climb up to get a panoramic view of the area.

We spent over two hours there, and left mainly because the camera ran out of power–Evelyn took over 225 pictures! You can easily spend most of a day on the grounds. If you like flowers and plants, be sure to check it out. Also, if you like butterflys, this is a great place to visit, since they have gardens set up specifically for butterflies. Pretty cool!

The next stop was the Austin Books, so we headed up to the North side of the city. We were hungry, so after finding the store, we went for lunch. We found a place called Banzai that serves sushi, so we stopped there. It was a nice place with some good food.

Now full, we headed up to Austin Books. It’s Austin’s biggest comic book store, and the largest comic store I’ve ever been in (and Evelyn and “dragged” me into a lot of stores). Needless to say, she was very pleased.

I must say, it was the best organized comic store I’ve ever been in, complete with really cool drawers for all the back issues (making it much easier to search for books). If you are a comic fan, and are near Austin, you MUST stop in this store. It’s amazing, and I’m not even a fan of comics. We walked out of there with four new Batman figures, a bunch of books, and a new T-Shirt. All in all, a very successful visit. I was just glad that we were able to walk out with as “little” as we did!

Next up, we headed back south to the SoCo area (and I now know what that means: South Congress). There are a ton of cool restaurants and shops down in SoCo (the Zen place we had noodles at is here). Lots of antiques, and generally “hip” stores. We stopped at a well known place called Uncommon Objects, which was really cool. A hipsters antique store is what I’d call it, though it’s too expensive for my taste. Regardless of price, the whole strip is worth browsing around. Lots of cool stores and places to eat.

In the end, I was thirsty, so we picked up some Texas beer (Real Ale Brewing Company) and Evelyn got some Goats Milk Ice Cream. (I was happy to see the ice cream. It was recently written up in one of my foodie guides–Rosengarten Report.) Then we headed back to the hotel to rest for a bit.

So, now it’s coming up on 7 PM. We’ve been able to relax a bit and will now be heading out for dinner. After dinner, we’re gonna head out to the super-huge independent bookstore and to the two big used music stores. Hopefully we can escape without spending too much money, but I’m not holding my breath.

If the weather holds tomorrow, we’ll head into wine & hill country. It’s supposed to rain, so we may have to forgo that and instead do museums.