We were tired after getting here. Evelyn was worn out and my back was killing me, so we started out slow. Ev took a nice long bath (the first time in months–only showers in PR) and I cleaned up the dozens of spam messages in my inboxes.

At around 5:30 we went driving around a bit, but I forgot my maps, so we couldn’t navigate around very well. Plus, my back was giving me shooting pains down my legs, so we went back to the hotel so I could pop some Aleve and pick up the maps. Problems solved.

Next, we headed up Congress Avenue into downtown. Congress is like State Street in Chicago and it dead ends into the state capital. I needed to walk a bit, so we parked and walked around the capital grounds. (A nice thing down here is that all the government parking and meters are free after 6 PM, and there are tons of lots, so parking isn’t a big deal, at least in the evening.)

The capital is really cool and you are free to walk around it–it’s open until 10 PM, though the guided tours stop at 4:30. And, as the Texans point out, the dome is taller than the US Capital building’s. It’s really cool to look up and see the four levels of Texas Governor paintings (including dear GWB), starting with the old guys at the top and then working down. The whole building is very classy and cool–lots of hand-carved wood and marble. We plan on going back and spending more time.

We were hungry, so went looking for food. Headed back down Congress (too fancy downtown–we only have jeans). We had passed a number of restaurants earlier, but wanted one closer to the river (for reasons to be explained below). We ended up at a place called Zen. Calling it a “fast food” place doesn’t do it justice. It’s a really kick-ass Japanese noodle joint. Evelyn had a salmon noodle dish and I had a steak one. Both were excellent.

The area we ate in is called “SoCo”, though I have no idea what that stands for. Nevertheless, it reminds me very much of the Wicker Park area in Chicago, except nicer (less traffic, cleaner, etc–put some of the cool parts of Chicago into a washing machine, clean off the scum, and you have Austin). There are a number of kooky looking stores that we are going to check out in the coming days.

After dinner we walked a couple of blocks North to the Congress Bridge. The bridge spans the Colorado River (which is the city’s North-South baseline). Every evening, at dusk, the largest urban bat colony emerges from underneath! You can find a couple of pictures here. It was really quite amazing. Suddenly you see hundreds and hundreds of bats streaming out. Then they follow in formation down the riverside.

Imagine a huge “S” of bats flying overhead–in a line that’s literally 3 blocks long! When they go overhead it’s like looking into a sky of black stars–there are that many of them. It’s really an amazing sight. (There are estimated to be 1.5 MILLION bats living under the bridge–and they all emerge every night.) As you can guess, Evelyn was pretty darn happy. She’s currently trying to figure out how to “take home” the giant bat sculpture near the bridge.

Tomorrow we’re going to start out visiting the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower park. Then we’ll head back to the downtown area and walk around a bit (I’m not in the mood for doing too much driving–my back needs a break). After that, we’ll be off to Austin Books, which looks to be a kick-ass comic book store (gotta check out the Batman stuff). Take a look at the video on their site. It looks pretty cool, at least to a geek: Austin Books.

After Evelyn gets her fill of comics, I’m gonna drag her over to BookPeople, which is a 40,000 square foot independent bookstore which has been rated one of the best in the country. Then we’ll probably walk across the street to two highly rated music stores. Should be fun.

On Wednesday we’ll probably head out to Hill Country to visit come wineries out there (yep, they make wine in Texas) and see how hilly Hill Country actually is.