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Travelogue, Continued
Jan. 15th, 2011 12:13 am In Austin tonight for an awesome one-off Shearwater show tomorrow. My favorite band of the 2000s is playing their three great albums-- Palo Santo, Rook, and The Golden Archipelago-- back-to-back before taking the rest of the year off from touring. Tickets were about eighteen bucks apiece, but the travel expenses are... a lot more. A LOT more.
Staying here tonight and at the Driskill Hotel tomorrow. This place is incredible-- the room is done up with genuine period pieces, including a wardrobe I'm almost afraid to touch because it's plainly so fragile-- and we have a balcony outside the room where we can just... chill. Overlooking loquat trees in bloom, Corinthian columns, and so on. The restaurant's food was excellent. I had antelope, which was... interesting, but the soups were fantastic and the sides were done very well. Experience was somewhat spoiled by the family at the next table over; the husband was OK but the woman was a repulsive creature and the two daughters were clearly headed in that direction. We're talking the kind of person who sends a plate of food back, not because it's prepared wrong or there's a roach in it, but because they've changed their mind and want something else.
I dunno. I go to some restaurants for the food and the ambience and maybe a bit of history. Some people seem to go so they can feel important and lord it over the wait staff.
Austin is pretty darned cool. Went to a genuine tea-shop today with some really nice oolongs; bought the Iron Goddess Oolong plus some black tea from an old-growth tea forest in Vietnam. Enjoyed a cup of Coconut Assam and a plate of sesame cookies there at the shop and got to read a magazine dedicated to tea that featured extreme obsessive geekery over Red Mark Pu-erh and such. Did not realize the publication existed, but it does and I can say that tea obsessives seem even weirder than wine obsessives. We also met up with a friend from college days who took us on a driving tour of the city. Hadn't seen the guy since June of '99, so that was really cool.
Sleepy now. Zzz.
Staying here tonight and at the Driskill Hotel tomorrow. This place is incredible-- the room is done up with genuine period pieces, including a wardrobe I'm almost afraid to touch because it's plainly so fragile-- and we have a balcony outside the room where we can just... chill. Overlooking loquat trees in bloom, Corinthian columns, and so on. The restaurant's food was excellent. I had antelope, which was... interesting, but the soups were fantastic and the sides were done very well. Experience was somewhat spoiled by the family at the next table over; the husband was OK but the woman was a repulsive creature and the two daughters were clearly headed in that direction. We're talking the kind of person who sends a plate of food back, not because it's prepared wrong or there's a roach in it, but because they've changed their mind and want something else.
I dunno. I go to some restaurants for the food and the ambience and maybe a bit of history. Some people seem to go so they can feel important and lord it over the wait staff.
Austin is pretty darned cool. Went to a genuine tea-shop today with some really nice oolongs; bought the Iron Goddess Oolong plus some black tea from an old-growth tea forest in Vietnam. Enjoyed a cup of Coconut Assam and a plate of sesame cookies there at the shop and got to read a magazine dedicated to tea that featured extreme obsessive geekery over Red Mark Pu-erh and such. Did not realize the publication existed, but it does and I can say that tea obsessives seem even weirder than wine obsessives. We also met up with a friend from college days who took us on a driving tour of the city. Hadn't seen the guy since June of '99, so that was really cool.
Sleepy now. Zzz.
